


Sweet Dreams are Made of This

by monroe_militia



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: But only for part of it, But then also the regular one, F/M, Nanites, Sort of an AU, There's an AU dream world
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-08
Updated: 2017-06-23
Packaged: 2018-02-07 23:45:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 35,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1918656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monroe_militia/pseuds/monroe_militia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Bass is taken over by the nanotech, he gets a glimpse of what his perfect dream world would be and who would be in it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Sebastian Monroe woke up to the feeling of warmth against his chest and the light tickle of hair against his face. He nuzzled closer, inhaling the familiar scent.

As he opened his eyes, he lifted his head a little and brought his hand away from Charlie's hip to gently brush the hair back from her neck before pressing his lips against the newly exposed flesh.

Charlie stirred a little and rolled over to look at him with sleepy eyes, a lazy smile on her lips.

He smiled back then pressed his lips to her forehead before she snuggled up closer.

Not long after, her steady, rhythmic, breathing gave away that she had already fallen back asleep. He smiled a little to himself as he looked down at her before he too shut his eyes.

* * *

When Bass woke up for the second time, he found the other side of the bed already empty.

That seemed strange, so he dragged himself out of bed and walked into the living room, rubbing at his eyes tiredly as he walked out in just his boxers.

"About time that you got up," Charlie commented as she walked over to him.

"I almost missed you apparently," Bass commented.

One of his hands grabbed hers and pulled her closer, while the other moved to the small of her back as he drew her in for a good morning kiss.

"You sure, did," Charlie responded. "I'm just on my way out."

"Can't you be late?" Bass asked in a rumbling growl.

"I already am late," Charlie responded in a teasing tone. "And it's your family that I'm meeting… About your birthday."

"Do I really need another big surprise party?" Bass questioned in a playfully complaining tone. "Do you know what would be a real surprise? If for once my mom didn't throw me a surprise party, or at least had it not on my actual birthday… Three months late, now that would be a real surprise party."

"Oh come on, you know you like the attention," Charlie pointed out with a wide grin.

"True," Bass agreed as he moved a step closer to her, his hands moving to grab onto her hips. "But I also like this attention too."

Charlie laughed loudly before she brought her lips back to his. "I'll be back later. Try to survive without me."

"I can try," he told her. "But if you come back to find my dead body, then that's on you."

She shot him one last grin and rolled her eyes before heading out the door.

* * *

Once she was gone, Bass made his way to the kitchen in search of something to eat. He didn't feel much like bothering to make anything difficult, so he just popped some Eggos into the toaster. As they toasted he made his way to the fridge and took a large chug out of a jug of orange juice before he grabbed the maple syrup, along with the juice, and moved them over to the kitchen counter.

He had the whole day ahead of him and a whole lot of nothing to do, so he took his breakfast into the living room and turned on the TV as he ate. He flipped through the channels until he found an action movie that was just starting. He was pretty sure that he'd seen it before, but figured that there probably wouldn't be anything better on during a Saturday morning, so he left it on as he began to eat.

* * *

"You look like you've had a productive day," Charlie commented with a smirk when she came home and found him in the living room, still on the couch with a beer in hand. He was caught up in watching the ending of the second sequel to the action movie.

He set his drink down and then turned around to look at her. She quickly hid something behind her back as she continued to stand behind the couch, keeping her body blocking his view of what was in her one hand as she roughly hit him in the shoulder with the other.

"Don't look!" She told him in a tone that would have been a lot more threatening if she didn't have a big grin plastered on her lips.

Bass continued to stare at her with a wide smile for several seconds then looked her up and down one last time before he finally turned his gaze back towards the TV screen. His attention, however, still remained primarily on her.

"Oh sure, you abandon me all day and now I'm not even allowed to look at you," he teased, calling after her as she left the room to go hide whatever had been behind her back. "I'm starting to feel a little abused."

"You're right. You're just a sad, neglected puppy, aren't you?" She taunted back playfully as she returned to the room.

"You think that you're so funny, don't you?" He challenged as he twisted in his seat to look back at her once again.

"You know I am," she responded, leaning against the edge of the couch.

A shriek of laughter emerged from her throat as he suddenly grabbed her waist and pulled her over the back of the couch. As he fell back into his seat, she landed on top of him. His arms were wrapped around her waist and she was still laughing as her head fell back onto his shoulder. He had to grin at her reaction.

"So, do I even get a hint about tomorrow?" He asked, his voice husky in her ear.

"It's a surprise," she told him in an amused tone. "That's kind of the idea of a surprise party."

"An _annual_ surprise party," Bass corrected.

"That just means that you don't have to plan your own party," she pointed out. "…So is this all you did all day? Sat at home watching movies?"

Since Charlie had come home, Bass had all but forgotten about the movie he'd been watching.

"I also worked on my surprised face," he joked. "It's getting so good that I should copyright it."

"Maybe, you should try a new one this time," she commented. "Change things up."

He let out a low chuckle at that before pointing out, "You know, I could just call Miles or Cyn or Angie to tell me."

"We both know that Miles avoids us and our planning at all costs, with the rare exception of submitting the occasional suggestion," Charlie pointed out. "So you wouldn't be able to get much out of him. And neither of your sisters is going to give you any information without some major bribing."

He let out an exaggerated sigh before he told her, "You're probably right."

"You know I'm right," Charlie told him before turning her head to kiss him.

"How in the hell did I get lucky enough to get you?" He asked, more to himself than to her.

"I ask myself that every day," she told him with a laugh.

"And yet I'm the self-obsessed one in this relationship," he commented with a grin.

"We're both lucky," she pointed out in a slightly more serious tone before a smirk crossed her lips. "And your title as the self-obsessed one is well-earned. You take more time than me to get ready in the morning because you're so busy staring at yourself in the mirror."

"And if I looked like you, I'd spend all day staring at any and every reflective surface," he informed her.

"And we'd both look beyond self-obsessed dating someone who looks exactly like us," Charlie responded.

Bass shifted a little, sliding a hand up under her shirt.

"Don't," she warned, but it was already too late.

"I bet that I can make you tell me something now," he said into her ear as he began to tickle her side.

Charlie began to laugh as she tried to shift out of his grip with no success. He only started tickling her harder, causing her to quickly jerk in his grasp. As she did so, she elbowed him in the gut, which effectively stopped him.

He quickly released his grasp on her, moving one hand over to where he had been elbowed. He let out a loud groan, pretending to be in more pain than he really was.

"You are such a faker," she accused, sitting up and turning her body towards him.

Bass leaned forward, bringing his mouth to hers, his lips already parted. Charlie kissed him back passionately, bringing a hand to the back of his head to pull him closer as she opened her mouth to grant him further access.

"I think you're trying to distract me," Bass murmured against her lips as his hands found their way to her hips.

"I think you like it," she purred back at him before her teeth began to tug lightly on his bottom lip as her hands slid down the back of his shirt.

"And I think that you're right again," he responded.

Before she had the opportunity to respond, he pressed his mouth back against hers and she could feel his lips quirking up into a smile.


	2. Chapter 2

"I'm telling you that there is something off about him," Miles hissed out, struggling to keep his voice quiet so that their fighting wouldn't be overheard.

"I don't see it," Rachel insisted. "He seems like the same arrogant bastard to me."

"Rachel, please," Miles said in a pleading tone. "I am begging you. There is something wrong with him."

"There's always something wrong with him," she interjected.

"Something else. I don't even really know how to describe it," he struggled to explain. "I've known Bass for my whole life and I am telling you that whatever that thing is, it is not him. It's just some kind of copy. And, yes, I realize how crazy I sound right now."

"You really think that the nanites took over Monroe?" Rachel questioned, seeming reluctant to accept the theory.

"Yes!" Miles said, getting the slightest bit of relief from the fact that she finally seemed to be beginning to understand what he had been trying to explain to her for the last ten minutes. "They already did it to Aaron once."

"Even if what you're suggesting is true, which I'm not necessarily agreeing that it is," Rachel began to respond, choosing her words carefully as she did so. "What can we even do about it?"

* * *

Bass woke up on his birthday to find Charlie dancing through the room to the faint sound of the radio coming from the kitchen as she picked out clothes for the day and threw them down onto the foot of her side of the bed.

As he sat up, he questioned, "Babe? Why does it smell like you're trying to burn the house down?"

She turned around as he began to stand up and told him, "No, don't get up! I'm making you breakfast in bed."

"No offence, but it smells more like you're burning breakfast to me," he responded as he began to head for the bedroom door.

He could hear her footsteps behind him as she insisted, "I only left it alone for like two minutes, I swear."

"Yes, but we both know how well it goes when you try to cook," he pointed out as he turned into the kitchen.

He instantly spotted the source of the smell, a frying pan that was letting off smoke, so he quickly turned the stove off. When he looked inside, he couldn't even tell what she had been attempting to make since it was so blackened and burnt.

"I'd try and eat this to make you feel better, but I'm honestly not sure that it's even edible," he told her.

She was looking pretty defeated, so he took a step closer to her and wrapped his arms around her waist before kissing her on the top of the head.

"I love you, Charlie. But you can’t cook to save your life," he commented with a chuckle.

A second passed before she pulled back from him with a big grin on her face.

He turned and threw out what he could of her attempt at breakfast before he tossed the pan into the sink. He figured that he could try and scrape off the rest of the charred and blackened remains of her cooking later.

When he turned back around, she was dumping the contents of a box of Pop Tarts out onto the kitchen table with a triumphant smile.

"There," she told him. "Your birthday feast."

He let out a laugh as he told her, "It's perfect."

* * *

As they got into the car a while later, Bass joked, "I wonder where we're going."

"Hey, your mom thinks that I'm some kind of scheming genius tricking you every year," Charlie told him with a grin.

"My mom is also very gullible," he retorted.

"And it's cute that you pretend to be surprised for her every year."

* * *

When they arrived at Bass's parents’ house, Charlie turned and asked him, "You've got your surprised face ready?"

"I always do."

"Then let's go."

She gave him a quick kiss before getting out of the car.

* * *

When they opened the door, Connor was already walking through the middle of the room with a bottle of water in hand.

"Surprise," he mumbled sarcastically as he turned to head for the back door.

Bass and Charlie both followed him.

"They're outside... I know, shocking," Connor commented as they walked through the door.

"Way to ruin the surprise for your grandmother, Connor," his grandfather commented once they were outside.

"You're right, my bad," Connor retorted just as sarcastically as he had spoken to his father. "Excuse me for going to get a drink for the pregnant girl... Besides, do you really think that he would have been surprised either way?"

With that Connor walked over to his girlfriend and handed her the water bottle that he had been carrying.

As Bass watched with a grin, Charlie whispered to him, "You look like you were actually surprised for once."

"He's right, Connor," Miles piped up with a smirk. "You ruined everything. We should probably just cancel the whole party now."

"I agree. You should just go home, Miles," Bass taunted his friend. "Who even invited you?"

"I wouldn't have made the cut if everyone else you knew wasn't already here," Miles shot back.

Miles may have been exaggerating a little, but it was actually pretty close to the truth. Both Bass's and Charlie's families were there along with Jeremy, Duncan, and Miles' girlfriend, Nora.

"That's not true," Connor pointed out with a smirk. "Mom's not here. I'm pretty sure that she's pretending that she was never invited."

“Or maybe she’s just pretending you were never born,” Miles added helpfully. “Either way.”


	3. Chapter 3

"Have you noticed anything weird about Bass lately?" Miles asked as he watched to make sure that the man was nowhere in sight.

"What do you mean?" Charlie questioned. "Isn't he always a little weird?"

"I mean different weird," Miles said with a sigh.

"Mom told me that you think that the nanites got to him, but I don't know," she admitted with a shrug. "Why would they have taken him over if they're not doing anything with him?"

"I don't know," he responded in an exasperated tone. "Maybe they're trying to collect information... I don't know why they're doing it, I just know that there's something really off about him lately and no one else seems to be able to see it."

Charlie paused to think back on Bass's behaviour over the last few days, really searching for anything off or different about it.

"I wouldn't have noticed anything off if you weren't so convinced," Charlie admitted. "But since you're saying that, I guess he might have been acting a little differently the last couple of days."

There was nothing big or too noticeably out of the ordinary. If the nanites really had taken over him, then they were pretending to be him pretty convincingly. She guessed that would make sense if they were inside his head. Still, even after all that she knew about how close Bass and Miles had been she was impressed that Miles had been able to see it.

The only difference that Charlie could think of was the looks. Since travelling together alone, they had developed a way of kind of communicating with a quick exchanged glance. It wasn't that they hadn't shared any glances in the last couple of days- They had -But now that she really thought about it, there was something a little bit off about the exchanges. It was almost as if the looks were still there, but only as a mask with something empty behind them.

"Alright, so maybe I believe you," Charlie admitted. "Then what's the plan?"

* * *

Bass smiled to himself as he watched Charlie, on the other side of the yard, laughing at something that Miles had said.

"When are you going to get it over with and propose to her?" Cynthia asked as she walked up beside her brother. "You can barely keep your eyes off of her still."

"Still?" Bass questioned as he turned to look at her. "Why do you sound so surprised?"

He chose to ignore her first question.

"When you two first got together, me and Angie had a bet about how long you'd last," she admitted.

"And I'm just hearing about this now?" He asked before taking a sip of his beer. "So how long did you two bet on?"

"I said three weeks," Cynthia told him.

"Oh, really?" He asked incredulously. "Three weeks? That's nice."

"It is compared to Angie's bet," she told him. "She bet on less than a week."

Bass shook his head in disbelief.

"Remind me to kick her ass later," he told her. "…Remind me to kick _your_ ass later."

"I think I'll pass on that," Cynthia responded with a laugh. "You still didn't answer my question."

"I know," he insisted. "That was intentional."

"So was me bringing it back up. Seriously, why haven't you proposed to her yet?"

"I'm not answering that."

"Because you have no answer, right?" She challenged. "Fine, I'll just go start asking Miles and Charlie about it… Unless you want to give me an answer."

"Don't you dare," he warned her.

"Then just tell me one thing," she requested. "Are you ever going to propose to her?"

"Maybe?" He said with a small laugh.

"Oh my god, are you blushing?"

"No."

"Yes, you are," Cynthia insisted.

"Shut up." He told her. "I don't blush."

"Hey, Angie," his sister called out. "Bass is blushing, isn't he?"

"Like a bride on her wedding day," Angela responded.

Cynthia turned to her brother with a grin, "Speaking of brides."

"Nope," he told her. "Not a word. You said that you'd stop if I answered one question."

"You said maybe," she pointed out. "That's a terrible answer."

"Alright, that's it," Bass said. "I'm done. I'm walking away now."

"Where? Over to Charlie? Feel free to trip and land on your knees in front of her," Cynthia told him. "Maybe pull a ring out of thin air."

He turned and glared at her over his shoulder before continuing to walk away from her.

* * *

Bass stopped next to his son and asked, "Did you know about your aunts' bet on how long me and Charlie would last?"

"Yeah," Connor responded. "Miles made a hundred bucks when you two lasted over a month."

"Of course he was in on it," Bass said with a small chuckle. "So are they on you to propose to Natalie?"

"No. Why?" Connor questioned as he turned to look at his father.

"Unbelievable," Bass muttered. "You're the one with the knocked up girlfriend and I'm the one they're trying to get to propose."

"But you're too old to have a girlfriend," Connor pointed out with a smirk. "And maybe Charlie's pregnant, but you just don't know it yet. Could be why they're after you."

"No, I'd know if Charlie was pregnant," Bass insisted as he thoughtfully watched her as she excitedly told Nora something.

"Are you sure?" Connor asked. "Have you seen her drinking lately?"

Bass mulled it over for in his head. His son did have a point. He couldn't remember the last time that he's seen Charlie drink something alcoholic. Maybe there was some logic to his son's theory after all.

* * *

Bass walked up behind his girlfriend and wrapped his arms around her waist as he murmured into her ear, "Can I talk to you for a minute inside?"

She turned around in his hold and wrapped her arms loosely around his neck as she grinned and told him, "I guess I could talk to you. I mean, it is your birthday, right?"

* * *

Once they were alone in the kitchen, Charlie hopped up to sit on the counter before asking, "What did you want to talk about?"

Bass hesitated for a moment before telling her, "This is probably going to sound crazy..."

"What?" She asked with a smile.

There was a short pause before he let out a nervous laugh and asked, "Are you pregnant?"

"How did you figure that out?" Charlie asked, much to his surprise.

"I didn't," he responded. "Connor did from something Cyn said."

"I didn't tell your sister," she told him. "I was going to tell you first tonight."

"So you're really pregnant?" Bass asked with a grin.

She bit down on her lip to hold back a smile as she nodded her head.

Bass took a few steps forward to close the distance between them as he pulled her in for a kiss.

Charlie had just wrapped her legs around his waist when a voice interrupted them.

"This is a kitchen, Sebastian, not a bedroom."

Charlie's legs dropped to his sides as Bass turned around to face his mother.

"Charlie's pregnant, Mom," he told her with a wide grin.

"Well, that's great for you two, but it doesn't mean that you need to try for another one on my counter," she told him.

Charlie's arms wrapped over his shoulders as she laughed into his neck while Bass's mother turned back out of the room.

"You realize that she's going to go tell everyone, right?" Bass asked.

"And whose fault is that?" Charlie teased.

"Come on, we'd better get back outside," he told her as he grabbed her legs and lifted her off the counter.

She let out a laugh as she wrapped her arms tighter around his chest.


	4. Chapter 4

Bass, or the thing that was wearing his face at the moment, let out a sadistic laugh.

"Did you really think that it would be that easy, Miles?" It asked. "Did you _really_ think that you could throw together a half-thought through plan to hit us over the head and that we would just disappear?"

"Well I was hoping," Miles admitted with an innocent shrug.

"Oh, Miles. Always with the humour," the nanites commented. "Do you think that hides how broken you are from the rest of the world?"

"If you're going to kill me, then just shut up and kill me," Miles insisted.

Charlie didn't look impressed with Miles' encouraging it to kill him. She purposely remained where she had already been standing, a fair distance away from Bass's body, as she shot her uncle a thorough glare.

* * *

"Put me down," Charlie ordered.

"What's the magic words?" Bass asked her.

"Please?" She asked as her grinning face appeared in his peripheral vision.

"Nope. That's not it," he insisted.

"You're so hot that I can barely control myself from tearing my clothes off right now?" Charlie tried again.

"That'll do," Bass told her with a grin.

Charlie tightened her grip on his chest as she moved to kiss him.

Bass turned his head to give her a quick kiss back, which quickly began to escalate and ended up getting quite drawn out.

"You two realize how disgusting you are, right?" Danny, who had been standing there throughout the entire conversation, asked.

Charlie pulled her lips away with a laugh and Bass set her down on the ground.

"You are so ungrateful," she accused her brother. "I just lied to my boyfriend's face so that he'd let me down to hug you."

"Hold on. Lied?" Bass asked as he grabbed her around the waist from behind and pulled her to him.

"I'm actually not having that tough of a time keeping my clothes on in front of both of our families," Charlie admitted as she turned in his hold so that their chests were touching. She offered him a small smile. "But I love you."

Bass grinned as he craned his neck down to kiss her again. His hands moved from her waist to grab hers and he intertwined their fingers together.

"I love you too."

" _So_ disgusting," Danny insisted.

"Danny, wait!" Charlie demanded urgently as her brother turned to walk away. "You forgot your hug after all that I went through for you!"

Bass laughed as he let go of Charlie and she immediately went barrelling at her brother, enthusiastically wrapping her arms around his shoulders.

* * *

"What the hell do you want from Monroe?" Rachel demanded.

Nanite Bass paused for a moment before letting out a laugh that didn't sound quite right.

"You're right. What could we possibly want out of the head of General Sebastian Monroe?" They asked. "We've already told you, Rachel. We want to fix humans. We want to lead your species to greatness. Sebastian Monroe is a wealth of knowledge on how to lead. We want to know how to convince others to follow us willingly."

Rachel was horrified into silence. It was bad enough that they were planning on trying to take over humans completely. It was even worse that they were planning on using Monroe's methods to do so.

"We thought that it would be more difficult to get access to the parts of Sebastian's head that we need, but the truth is that he's even more broken on the inside than you are, Miles," they commented.

For once Miles remained silent, although his eyes were shooting daggers.

"Aaron had some fight in him. He tried to escape the beautiful dream world we put him in and fought to remember. He wondered which was the dream world and which was the real one as we struggled to keep him contained," they continued. "Sebastian accepted the world that we put him into far too easily. It's pathetic, really. He's clinging onto the world that we gave him for dear life. And you want us to take that away from him? What kind of friends does that make you?"

* * *

"How long did you know?" Cynthia asked her brother. "Did you seriously let me bother you about proposing for that entire conversation without even dropping a hint about Charlie's pregnancy?"

"I didn't know then," Bass admitted. "I just found out in the kitchen barely ten minutes ago."

"Well come here," Cynthia insisted as she stretched out her arms.

"I'm not a hugger," Bass protested weakly.

"Shut up. Yes, you are," his sister insisted before wrapping her arms around him.

Bass hugged his sister tightly back and let out a laugh as he heard her ask, "So now are you going to propose?"

* * *

"I think that we should play a game," the nanites suggested as a smirk crossed Bass's features.

"How about we don't," Miles countered.

"Play the game and I'll give you your friend back," they offered in a tone that sounded much more like a threat than a gift. "We already have the information that we need from him and keeping him in his dream world is growing tedious anyways..."

They paused for a moment as they looked around the room before their gaze settled on Charlie.

"Charlotte, you've been awfully quiet. How would you like to play?"

Charlie felt bile rise in her throat at the sound of the nanites calling her 'Charlotte', especially while they were wearing Bass's face. She took a deep swallow before answering them in a voice that came out shakier than she would have preferred.

"What kind of game?"

"Charlie, don't!" Rachel called out.

She was horrified at the idea that Charlie was considering a game that might end in Rachel losing her other child to Sebastian Monroe as well.

"A guessing game," they responded. "We want you to guess what Sebastian's dream world is."

"Huh?" Miles asked in complete surprise.

"We're curious," they insisted. "We want to hear her guess."

There was a brief silence before Rachel spoke up. "He's probably dreaming that he has the republic back with Connor next to him on one side and Miles on the other."

"Is that what you think, Charlotte?"

Charlie couldn't bear to look into the eyes of the things controlling Bass as she shifted from foot to foot.

How was she supposed to know what Bass's dream world was like? She didn't know him that well. No one really did but Miles. So why weren't they asking him?

"I don't know," Charlie admitted.

"Guess." They insisted, using their best General Monroe impression.

"Why are you asking me?" She demanded. "I _don't_ know. He's probably imagining somewhere with Connor and Emma and Miles."

A sadistic smirk crossed Bass's features.

"Well was she right?" Miles finally questioned after a long, drawn out silence.

"We didn't say that she had to be right. We just said that she had to guess."

With that, Bass's entire body went limp and he fell to the ground in a heap. At the same time, a swarm of fireflies appeared in the room out of seemingly nowhere. They hovered over his body for a moment before they disappeared out of the open door.


	5. Chapter 5

Bass's eyes opened and he sat up. His first reaction was to automatically search for Charlie, only to find her looking over at him with the same nervous look that Miles and Rachel were giving him. Reality began to sink back in and he realized that, although this might be Charlie that he was looking at, it definitely wasn't his Charlie... He didn't even have a Charlie.

If this was reality, then that meant that almost all of those people who he had been so convinced that he'd just been with were really gone. He was losing them again, all at once, and it was too much.

Miles watched as Bass's facial expression fell and transformed into a look that he knew too well.

"No," Bass insisted weakly before he began to shake his head. " _No_."

He leaned forward and his head fell into his hands, which ran over his face and through his hair as he continued to shake his head.

"Bass?" Miles asked a little uneasily. "Are you good?"

When Bass looked back up again there were tears pooled in his eyes. He most definitely was not good.

"I can't do this," he told his friend, staring straight at him. "I can't lose them. Not again, Miles. I can't lose them again."

"Shit," Miles exhaled as he began to move towards his collapsed friends.

"I can't have my baby sisters taken away from me. Not again," Bass continued. "Miles, I got to see them have the chance to grow up. And now they're gone. _Again._ "

Rachel felt uncomfortable watching Bass like this. It was a lot more difficult to think of him as the heartless monster who had taken her son and the father of her children away from her while seeing him in such an overwhelmingly emotional state. It was almost scarier to her knowing that he still had emotions like this than believing that he felt nothing.

Rachel wrapped her arms around herself, grabbing onto her elbows and pulling them close as she turned to walk away.

Charlie turned and watched her mother go before glancing back over at where Bass was sitting, now with Miles beside him, on the ground. She hesitated for a moment longer before turning to follow her mother, feeling like she was intruding on a moment that she shouldn't be. This was more than walking in on a personal moment and she doubted that Bass wanted her there witnessing his breakdown.

Miles reached over and grabbed Bass's gun away from him, figuring that he shouldn't be around weapons at the moment, especially after what had happened the last time that he had lost his family.

"My whole family was alive again. Jeremy too… And Nora… Emma… Duncan… Danny and Ben. None of them were dead," Bass continued. "Things were normal. More than that. Things were good. Connor was there too. He was happy. He had a pregnant girlfriend… And I hadn't messed everything up... I was happy, Miles. I didn't want to wake up. Now I have nothing... I have _no one_."

Miles let out a small sigh before turning and telling him, "You've still got me, remember?"

"Yeah, that's a joke," Bass responded, swiping a little at his eyes in a futile attempt to dry the tears off of his face. It didn't really matter anyways; it wasn't like Miles hadn't seen him cry before.

"In case you haven't noticed, you do," Miles insisted. "I don't admit that, but I know that you know that. No matter what, I can't get rid of you."

"Nice. That makes me feel a lot better, Miles," Bass told him dryly. "Good to know I'm like a fungus that you can't get rid of."

"I haven't exactly been trying to lately, have I?" Miles questioned.

* * *

Bass didn't get even the slightest bit of sleep until the next day when he drank until he passed out. It wasn't until then that Miles left his side. After all, there was no way that Miles was going to leave him alone after he had lost everything again. After it had almost been too much for Bass when he had lost his family last time, without other people piled onto that loss, Miles was planning on keeping a close watch on him.

Once Bass was passed out, Miles decided that he'd better get some sleep himself. He did have a plan though; a plan to try to help not only Bass, but Charlie as well.

For the most part, Charlie had covered up her pain over what had happened with Jason in Austin pretty well while they had still been fighting the Patriots. She'd still had some drive then. She'd had a distraction that she could throw herself into in order to keep her mind off of what she had done as much as possible. Since they'd defeated the Patriots and things had settled down though, it had become clear that it was paining her even more once again.

It wasn't that she didn't hide it well; she certainly did put on a good front. It's just that Miles was very familiar with putting on a front of being alright when you weren't. He'd been doing it for years and he could see it in his niece that she was hurting.

Miles wasn't exactly a fan of sitting around anyways and he knew that what Bass and Charlie both needed was a purpose. They needed something to keep them going and that was exactly what he had planned for them.

* * *

Bass woke up looking just as terrible as he had before falling asleep.

"What the hell are you smirking about?" He grumbled over to his friend as he sat up.

"I know you. You need two things right now," Miles commented. "A mission and hope."

"That's great, Miles," Bass interrupted. "So, what? Are you going to write me some heartfelt poetry that'll help give me hope for the future? And what? Is my mission in life going to be to try and coexist with Rachel? No thanks."

"Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of going to go find your kid," Miles corrected. "I don't really do sappy poetry. I thought that you'd know that by know."

"And how do you expect us to find him?" Bass asked in an annoyed tone. "We have no idea where to even look. Connor could be anywhere. And even if we do find him, that doesn't mean that he's going to want to have anything to do with me."

"You're right, we don't know where to look," Miles agreed. "That's why we're going to look everywhere until we find him. And, when we do, we're going to make him listen to you."

Bass let out a weak laugh before resuming his drinking from the day before. Finally, he questioned, "Did you clear all this with Rachel?"

"Not yet," Miles admitted. "But we're going. Charlie and Rachel too. I'll worry about figuring out how to convince Rachel if she doesn't want to go. You worry about not drinking yourself to death before we leave."

"That coming from you," Bass muttered under his breath before downing another swig of whiskey.

He wasn't entirely sure that he cared if he drank himself to death or not.


	6. Chapter 6

Bass had barely managed to sleep the night before, but it was still a disappointment when he woke up, expecting a warm bed, only to find himself struck by reality all over again when he found himself lying on the cold, hard ground. He slowly sat up, groaning to himself as he moved and felt a sudden feeling of sickness overtake him.

"What are you, a frat-girl at her first party?" Miles joked as he walked in the room to find Bass emptying the, mostly alcoholic, contents of his stomach.

Bass finished retching before glaring up at his friend. Although Miles' tone had come off light, Bass knew that there was an underlying unease. He hated feeling like Miles was walking on footsteps around him. Miles was his only constant at that point, but even he wasn't fully there for him. Things were so different between them these days and that pain came back all over again, but he struggled to push it back. He had enough pain and loss to deal with without worrying about losing shreds of what he still had at least partially left.

"Hungry?" Miles questioned with a wavering smirk.

"Unless you want to watch me throw up all over again, then I advise you don't talk about food," Bass warned him.

"Alright, your call," Miles responded with a shrug. "Grab your crap, everyone else is ready to go."

He wasn't thrilled that Charlie and Bass both were refusing to eat, but he figured that Bass at least had the excuse of a massive hangover. Charlie, on the other hand, had been barely eating since she'd had to take out Jason back in Austin. Sure, she would nibble at whatever food she was given in order to try to keep up appearances, but only enough that she could keep people from bothering her about her lack of appetite.

* * *

Bass came out a few minutes after Miles did, not looking a whole lot better than he had the day before. His appearance was still disheveled, but he seemed perfectly indifferent to how he looked. As he moved, his bloodshot eyes were pointing daggers at Rachel, as if daring her to try to get on his bad-side while he was already in a bad enough mood.

* * *

Charlie had been trying to ignore the feeling of eyes on her for the last several minutes, but the feeling of Bass's scrutinizing gaze on her was unignorable, like a fresh, itching mosquito bite. Finally, she couldn't stand it anymore and turned to look over at him expectantly. Even after doing so, she couldn't tell if he was staring at her or just staring off into nowhere, trapped in a world in his mind in a whole new way.

He continued to watch her, studying the furrow in her brow that had grown so familiar to him. He wondered whether it would still be familiar to him without the nanite-induced memories of another version of her implanted in his mind.

Charlie dropped her gaze, but could still feel his eyes on her until, finally, she looked back up and cleared her throat. It concerned her that he was acting stranger now than the imposter version of him had been for days.

He blinked slowly, then a couple of times more, much quicker, as if he were coming out of a daze. He remained silent, his face revealing nothing, as he turned to direct his gaze over the side of the wagon instead.

He stayed like that, silently, for he wasn't sure how long. As he did, his mind focused back on replaying the memories, which he should have been trying to forget instead, before finally he spoke up for the first time since they had departed.

"I miss air-conditioning."

"Don't we all."

Miles knew that there were things his friend missed much more, people he missed much more, but was relieved to see a bit of humour in his friend who had been staring into nowhere with dead eyes for hours on end. Unfortunately for him, the moment was short-lived and it was clear that his friend had exhausted his conversational skills for the time being.

* * *

They stopped for a break to eat and Miles was less than impressed when the only one who seemed to be even remotely interested in the food that Charlie had hunted down was Rachel.

Charlie herself was, as per usual, picking at it just enough to keep up the appearances of eating regularly. Meanwhile, Bass was just staring down at his food with a look Miles remembered from shortly after the blackout when Bass had complained at every single meal about how there was no way that he was actually going to eat whatever small animal they had hunted down that day. In the end, he'd always eaten it anyways, but Miles was growing increasingly impatient this time. He was just about to threaten the other man, when he looked up from his meal and turned his attention to the Matheson who had captured it.

"I think I'd rather go back and try your nanite cooking," he mumbled under his breath before giving in and lifting the meat, which's source he would rather not dwell on, to his lips.

A second passed before realization crossed Charlie's features and she turned to him with a look of confusion and asked him, "What do you mean my nanite cooking?"

The food which he had, oh so reluctantly, been nibbling at before suddenly became infinitely captivating to Bass as he continued to focus his attention solely on it, rather than the question he had just been asked.

"Why was nanite me cooking for you?" Charlie questioned, with an edge to her voice this time.


	7. Chapter 7

_"Why was nanite me cooking for you?" Charlie questioned, with an edge to her voice this time._

Bass knew that he had messed up and was convinced that there was no right response to that. Still, he had to internally flinch at his choice of response immediately after he told her, "I'm not sure it could really be called cooking, so much as it was trying to burn our apartment down." He wished that he hadn't said anything. He really had not meant to reveal that they had lived together in his nanite-induced dream world. 

There was a brief uncomfortable silence before Miles turned to his niece and commented, "Well, I guess we know why the nanites wanted you to guess what his dream world was." It was clear that he had been going for amused, but somehow his voice had ended up with an edge to it that couldn't be ignored. 

Charlie glared back at her uncle before walking off to leave the two men alone. As she was going, Bass was sure that he should stop talking and yet words kept coming out as he looked over at Miles and desperately tried to make the situation less uncomfortable by asking, "Dude, do you remember Pop Tarts? We ended up eating those after nano Charlie burnt the hell out of whatever she was trying to make... I swear she made you look like you were a good cook." 

Miles stood in silence for a moment before turning to walk away. Bass figured that having Miles just walk away and not yell at him for the dream world that he had been trapped in was the best that he really could have hoped for anyways. 

* * *

The wagon ride was no less uncomfortable after that revelation. Bass could feel Rachel's accusing glare on him, even as he tried to avoid looking in her direction. She clearly was not pleased with the idea of Bass being involved with her daughter, even in an imaginary world that he had no control over. She was by no means Bass's biggest concern, but eventually he found himself unable to keep from saying anything for any longer. 

Although he was hoping to ease the tension on the wagon, rather than increase it, he still found himself glaring daggers over at Rachel as he insisted, "It's not like I asked to be taken over by your damn robots." Rachel said nothing, but it was clear by her facial expression that she had little to no sympathy for him since finding out about his fake relationship with her daughter. He turned his focus over to Charlie instead, who was staring out over the side of the wagon in an attempt to avoid meeting his gaze at all costs, as he added, "There's not exactly many options around here. You were a better option than Rachel. That's it. If we were in New Vegas, I probably would have thought I was living with Duncan." 

He wasn't entirely certain that it was true, but he was trying to convince himself just as much as he was trying to convince her. He hadn't felt anything for Charlie before the nanites had taken over him, or at least not any feelings that he had been willing to admit to himself, but things had gotten much more complicated since he had been put in a situation where he had discovered just what being with her could be like in a perfect world. Still, he wasn't sure why _she_ had been the girl that the nanites had chosen to put him with. After all, Duncan and Emma had both been alive and well in that world. So why the hell had he been in love with Charlie instead of them? 

Bass mentally scolded himself as he corrected that to nanite Charlie. He really needed to stop thinking about them as the same person. It was already becoming a problem for him. 

The silence dragged on for an uncomfortably long amount of time before Charlie finally dropped the charade of being infinitely interested in staring out at a landscape that was barely changing and turned to look over at him. He was taken by surprise when, instead of making some sort of snippy comment, she asked, "What are Pop Tarts?" Clearly she had still been listening as she had been walking away earlier. 

Bass held back a laugh as he told her, "Food." 

"No, they aren't," Miles immediately argued. 

"What are you talking about?" Bass questioned. "We lived off of those things for like three months." 

"Exactly and now even thinking about them is disgusting," Miles retorted. 

Bass muttered something under his breath about how he'd rather eat Pop Tarts than blackout food, but Miles chose to remain silent. 


	8. Chapter 8

Charlie and Bass had been sitting alone in silence for several dragged out minutes. He had been sitting trapped in his thoughts while she bit down on her bottom lip and glanced over at him every minute or two until finally she could no longer keep the question weighing on her mind from escaping her lips. "So what was it like in your dream world?" 

He glanced up at her, half-glaring in her direction, as he asked, "What exactly are you looking for with that question, Charlotte?" 

She glared back at him, refusing to let him intimidate her into dropping the subject. Obviously he wasn't as annoyed with her as he liked to pretend if he had dreamed that they were living together, even if it was just because she was the least repulsive option around. 

"I want to know what you thought happened," she insisted. 

"It's not like it was just a few days to me," he told her gruffly. "It's like a whole alternate set of memories that I'm not going to sit around and describe to you." 

"Fine. Then tell me about one day," she persisted. "Tell me what happened the last day before you woke up and I'll stop asking you." 

He considered for a moment and Charlie had become convinced that he wasn't going to tell her anything by the time that he finally opened his mouth, with his gaze studying the bark on a nearby tree rather than looking over at her, as he told her, "It was my birthday and I woke up to the smell of your failed attempt at breakfast trying to burn the whole building down while you were completely oblivious to the fact that anything was wrong. You were too busy dancing around, picking out clothes, and you wondered why I was getting up to go try to prevent a fire." 

Curiosity took over then and Charlie already felt the need to interrupt as she asked, "Did I dress different?" 

Her bets were that in an electrical world in his mind she probably wore something different, but she wasn't certain she wanted to know what his fantasy world had her dressed in. Still, she had to ask. 

"Not really. Mostly your clothes were just a hell of a lot cleaner," he responded. He explained their breakfast situation, mostly skimming over the parts that she already knew about, before he told her, "And we're just going to skip straight to showing up at the completely obvious surprise party-" 

"Why?" She interrupted, suddenly intrigued by what he might be trying to leave out. If he was already explaining that much, then what could he possibly be trying to dodge telling her about? 

He looked up to find that she was wearing one of her most stubborn expressions, so he looked her dead in the eyes and responded, "Because I'm not explaining how shower sex works to you." 

He had to give her credit. She didn't even flinch at that, at least not that he could notice. 

* * *

Charlie was surprised when she found out about all of the people who were alive and well in his dream and her heart wrenched at the mention of Danny and her father and Nora, who Bass insisted he had always liked better with Miles anyways. She also couldn't help but notice the mention that Emma was alive in the world and so was Duncan, who had apparently attended his imaginary birthday party, despite his comment the day before about how it being her that he was in the dream with meant nothing and that it probably would have been Duncan he was with if they'd been in New Vegas when he had been taken over. 

"...And Connor somehow psychically figured out that you were pregnant, even though you hadn't told anyone." 

"Hold on a second. I was _pregnant_?" For someone who had been doing such a good job at not reacting or letting her surprise show, that sure got to her. 

"Is it really that hard to believe that, in a world where raising a kid or even giving birth to one isn't a huge risk, I'd want another one?" He muttered out defensively. 

"I guess not," she responded, although her words didn't come out sounding overly convincing. 

He moved to brush some dirt off of the knees of his jeans, as if that section somehow bothered him more than any of the other dirt on him, then commented, "And that was basically it other than my sister bugging me some more about proposing while you were off with Danny. And then I woke up." 

He rose to his feet, as if getting up would somehow end the conversation and erase it from having happened, but she remained seated on her over-sized rock and after a long silence finally commented, "I probably wouldn't have wanted to wake up either." 

He glanced over at her, but her features were guarded as she too rose to her feet to go back to the wagon before he had the chance to ask what the hell that was supposed to mean. 

Did she just want a world without a blackout or one with rest of her family back? Had she meant that she would want to live in a dream world that the nanites had constructed for her specifically? Or just _maybe_ did she mean that she wouldn't have minded living in his? 


	9. Chapter 9

This whole trip was a stupid idea. Bass knew that and yet he had still let Miles talk him into it. Now, he was stuck on this damn wagon with Rachel peering over her shoulder to make sure that he wasn't trying to make some kind of move on her daughter while every second it sank in more and more just how pointless this whole idea was.

They weren't going to find Connor. He'd been gone for weeks and they didn't have the slightest hint of where he could be. They didn't even have a damn picture to show people. What were they supposed to do? Go around asking people if they'd seen a curly-haired guy around his age? Because that would yield accurate results.

Besides, even if they found him, there was no guarantee that he would come back with them. Who was he kidding? Odds were that he wouldn't after the way that they had left things.

This was such a waste of time.

* * *

Bass had gone back to staring off into the distance, trapped in his own thoughts in a way that was more than a little concerning, when they stopped the wagon for the night.

"Bass!" Miles tried again as he waved a hand in front of his face. " _Bass!_ "

Nothing.

Miles let out a sigh and gave up on trying to get him to snap out of it for the moment and instead went to go help Rachel set up camp for the night.

Charlie considered following him, but instead she got up from her seat to move closer and stare into his eyes. She moved a little to the side, but he still didn't react. His eyes remained as unresponsive as if he were asleep with them open.

"Monroe," she tried.

Still nothing. That wasn't that surprising though when he hadn't showed any signs of hearing Miles.

Then again, she apparently was someone close to or just as important to him in the world that the nanites had thrown him in. In that world, she had a whole different kind of power and maybe, just maybe, she could use that to get through to him and make him stop giving her the vacant stare that was making him more and more uncomfortable.

She shifted closer to him a little, then peeked over to find that Miles and her mother were both still looking the other way. She moved a little closer and brushed her lips against his. The whole thing lasted less than a second, yet she still had to whip her head over to check that her family still wasn't looking.

By the time she turned to look back at him, his eyes had come back into focus and he was looking at her in confusion.

"Why did you do that?" He asked her.

"Do what?"

He could tell that she was going for a blank expression, but the fact that her eyes were still focused over on her uncle instead of on him was not helping her case.

"You just kissed me," he pointed out bluntly.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she insisted.

Before he had the chance to argue with her act, she was already off of the wagon and heading away from her.

Unbelievable. He wasn't that crazy.

* * *

Charlie frowned when she rolled over once again, only to find Monroe staring over at her. Because that was going to help her sleep.

It was so much easier trying to pretend that you weren't having problems sleeping when everyone else was asleep. He apparently couldn't sleep either though and now she found herself spending more and more time stuck in an uncomfortable position while trying to talk herself out of moving, until finally she couldn't take it any longer and had to readjust.

"You know, I'd probably be asleep by now if you weren't staring at me," she grumbled out, even though she wasn't entirely convinced that it was true. Maybe she would stand a better chance, but it wasn't like it would be the miracle cure.

Bass was struck by the similarity in her words to what she had said the first night that she had stayed at his place in his dream version of things. He hadn't been able to believe that she was still thrashing around trying to get comfy, so he had settled on watching her and asking if she was done yet. She had just gotten indignant and insisted that she wouldn't be having any problems if he wasn't watching her like some kind of creep waiting for her to fall asleep. Of course, that had ended in laughter and snuggling and this just ended in rolling over and both of them ignoring the other while he pretended that there wasn't a rock digging into his thigh.


	10. Chapter 10

Charlie couldn't sleep. Again. At least when they had been fighting, she had been able to use up enough of her energy to get an almost reasonable number of hours of sleep, but riding on a wagon all day proved to be only a further hindrance to her sleep schedule. She hated the fact that she needed a fight to exhaust her into sleeping. She hated that this was her life now.

She knew that Miles drank to get to sleep sometimes and that idea was looking more and more appealing, but she didn't want to need alcohol to function. She just wanted all of this to fix itself. She wanted to be able to close her eyes for more than five minutes without having to picture Jason covered in blood. She was going to be sick if she kept thinking about the bullet-hole that she had put in him.

Oh, God. She needed a distraction. She needed it badly.

She sat up and debated stealing Miles' whiskey out of his bag when she found that Monroe was already sitting up, drinking from his own flask. So they were in the same boat again. Who would have thought that she would end up having anything in common with him?

"What's your excuse tonight?" He muttered. "I wasn't even looking at you this time."

Instead of answering his question, she turned it around on him, "What's your excuse? Can't sleep without some imaginary bed?" Her words came out sounding bitter, but maybe that was just because she was annoyed by him asking her.

"That's part of it," he admitted. "Going back to sleeping outside isn't exactly my first choice."

She didn't bother asking what the other part was. She knew he was avoiding his problems as much as she was avoiding her own. And if they really were that similar, then the silence of night only made the thoughts he was trying to block out even angrier.

There was a brief silence before she asked, "We lived together, right?"

His voice came out annoyed as he pointed out, "I already told you that."

He took another swig out of his flask as she wrapped her arms loosely around her knees.

"You're used to sleeping in a bed with me."

This time it wasn't a question. She wasn't looking for an answer.

"There's no reason we both shouldn't get to sleep."

Now he was the one with questions as he arched a brow at her.

"I can't make a bed appear, but I could sleep over there."

Nothing.

"Or at least try to."

He would have thought for sure it was a joke if it weren't for the look on her face. She looked dead serious. Even then, he still wasn't entirely convinced.

He took one last chug from his flask, then closed the top.

"Whatever."

She still wasn't moving. If she was expecting him to ask her, then she had another thing coming.

He tossed his flask aside and moved back onto the ground. She debated ignoring him and lying back down in her own spot, but he wasn't the only one she had offered for. She probably wouldn't have offered if it was just for him.

She wanted to distract herself. She wanted to find a miracle cure to help herself sleep. Hell, she was willing to give anything a chance at this point.

Bass was surprised when she came over and joined him. She lay so close that they were nearly touching, while she faced the opposite direction. He was confused by what she was doing and by the fact that she seemed to be pissed at him after she had been the one who had offered.

Several seconds passed in silence as he lay perfectly still before finally she asked, "How did we usually sleep?"

He wished that this was still the dream world and that he could just cuddle up to her and have all of his problems disappear, but this wasn't that Charlie. That Charlie didn't exist.

"I don't know if you-" He tried.

"Please, just..." She trailed off.

He was only more confused as he hesitantly shifted a little closer and wrapped one arm loosely around her.

He waited a second. And then another, but she wasn't moving away or arguing.

He shifted a little closer and made himself comfy and waited to see if she would complain or leave, but she stayed eerily still so finally he closed his eyes.

Charlie struggled to pretend that he was someone else or that this was his dream world or that they were in any other situation than broken ex-General Monroe being the one holding her.

She was human. She was upset. That was it. It didn't matter that he was the one holding her. She just needed some kind of comfort. Something to assure her that she would make it through the night.

How the hell had it come to this?

* * *

Bass stirred awake the next morning and felt the tickle of hair against his face. Instead of pulling away from the sensation, he moved closer and brushed his lips against her skin.

"Good morning, beautiful," he murmured in between kisses.

Charlie felt Monroe's stubble brush along her flesh as his lips moved along her cheek. That wasn't the only thing she felt. A certain part of his anatomy was much more awake than he was.

"Um, Bass."

She hadn't even realized she was calling him it instead of Monroe until the word had already left her lips. That wasn't her biggest concern at the moment anyways and they were in a strangely intimate situation for her to want to refer to him as Monroe.

Her voice jolted him awake as his eyes flew open and the words 'I love you' died on his lips. Dammit, he'd been dreaming about the stupid dream world again. He quickly pulled away and cleared his throat as he moved the blanket to cover himself more.

"Sorry."

She turned and sat up and then was hit with an especially inconvenient thought.

"The nanites are everywhere, right?" She asked. "So does that mean that you've seen what I really look like naked or was it just what you want me to look like?"

"You're not helping, Charlie," he grunted out.

"It's a serious question," she insisted. "You have memories of having sex with me and I don't even know if they're just a fantasy or if the nanites made it accurate."

She was at a disadvantage in this. For all she knew, he knew exactly what she was like in bed and exactly what she looked like naked. She wasn't sure which option was worse: having him really know what she looked like or having him have a memory of the idealized version of what she was like.

"I don't know," he insisted. "And unless you're offering a show and tell, then I guess we aren't finding out. So can we just stop talking about you naked so that I can get rid of this before they wake up?"

She held back a laugh at that and let her voice come out sounding more irritated than she really was. "Fine."


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **A/N: Apparently I forgot that I've had this chapter written since I posted the last one, so sorry for the unnecessarily long wait. Hopefully the chapter is worth it...**

There must be something wrong with her. Something more than she had realized before. That had to be the only explanation for what she was about to do. She was completely out of her mind.

Bass looked up in surprise when Charlie once again tracked him down. Did she really have to show off her tracking skills every chance she got? Couldn't she just give him ten minutes on his own? She hadn't said a word to him all day, since that morning's incident that she had found so damn hilarious, but now as soon as he wanted a moment to himself there she was again. It was like she was doing it on purpose.

"What do you want?" He asked her coldly.

"That annoyed act would work a lot better if we didn't both know that you have a thing for me," she pointed out.

He couldn't believe the nerve on her as he shook his head. "I don't have a thing for you. You were just the piece of meat they used to keep me distracted."

"You thought I was pregnant," Charlie countered.

"I guess they chose the body they thought would keep me interested, but might also make a decent mom," he muttered. "Otherwise it definitely would have been Duncan. You don't exactly scream sex appeal, Bambi."

She frowned. What was the point of him denying things after he had already told her about them?

"So I was just the piece of meat to keep you interested, but I had no sex appeal?" She challenged. "You do realize you're contradicting yourself again, right?"

"What do you want, Charlie?" Bass growled out. "Are you looking for an excuse to make me the bad guy for getting brainwashed? Or are you expecting me to play boyfriend like we live in happy dreamland? Because I'm not interested in either. So why don't you run on back to your mom and you two can bond over how horrible I am for being possessed by her fucking airborne robots."

"Actually, she snuck off with Miles," she informed him. "So I'd really rather not go find her right now."

"Well then go sit by yourself. Go for a walk. I don't care," he grumbled. "Just leave me alone if all you're going to do is sit there and bug me."

She didn't move, but she didn't say anything either. He decided to ignore her as he leaned with his head back against the trunk of a tree and closed his eyes. He was sure he wasn't really going to fall asleep, but maybe if he pretended to, then she'd take a hint and go away.

A few seconds passed in silence before he heard a faint rustling. He waited a moment, then peeked one eye open to check if she was gone. Both eyes flew open when he found that she was still there, but her shirt was lying on the ground.

She'd captured his attention now.

She wasn't saying anything or looking for another shirt or even covering herself up. She was just standing there looking at him. Was she out of her freaking mind? Or was he?

"What are you doing?" He asked.

Now she looked a little unsure of herself.

"Show and tell," she told him.

" _What?_ "

One of them was definitely out of their mind. It was just a matter of which one. Or maybe they both were.

"I want to even the playing field," Charlie insisted.

This was about the questions she'd been asking him this morning, wasn't it?

"You don't know if I've really seen you naked or not, so you figured why not take your shirt off?" He questioned. "Wouldn't it make more sense to get me to take my clothes off?"

She didn't even flinch.

He let out a laugh. "You want to have sex to find out if it's the same as in my dream?"

She did not look impressed that she was being laughed at. "I don't want you being the only one with an idea of what it would be like."

He let out another laugh. "So, what? You just sleep with any guy who considers what you might be like in bed?"

Now she was getting annoyed.

"Never mind," she grumbled as she reached down to grab her shirt. She wouldn't meet his eyes as she added, "This was a stupid idea."

"Charlie, hold on."

He let his head fall back hard against the trunk of the tree supporting him as she turned back around and hesitated with her shirt halfway on. When he didn't say anything, she pulled it back down the rest of the way and smoothed it out instead of looking at him.

The fact that she had stopped instead of storming off made him wonder if there was something more to this than just trying to keep him from having the upper hand.

"What?" She hissed out when he didn't say anything else.

He wavered for a moment before he slowly rose to his feet. How the hell had he wound up in a situation where he was about to strip for Miles' niece?

"You want to make yourself feel better?" He questioned in an exasperated tone. "Fine."

Charlie watched in surprise as he pulled his shirt off over his head and tossed it aside. For someone who had found it so hilarious when she had suggested that they even the playing field, he sure wasn't even hesitating as he unbuckled his belt.

Her first reaction when the last of his clothes came off was to look away. A reaction that was stupid, considering she was the one whose bright idea this had been. He had just stripped because she didn't like being at a disadvantage to him and his memories of her without clothes on. She was amazed that he didn't start laughing again as she felt the urge to laugh at herself to try to recover from the embarrassment.

Instead she turned to look back at him and reassured herself that she was supposed to be looking, that was the whole point, as she took in the sight of him. He was standing there completely unabashed as she felt her cheeks begin to burn.

"Happy?" He questioned.

Clearly he did not think that she was still planning on going through with her original plan. He probably didn't think that she had _ever_ really been planning to go through with it. And could she really blame him? She was flustered enough just from this as she struggled to keep her eyes from settling on any one part of his body for too long.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **A/N: This chapter is pretty much pure smut. So if that's not something you're interested in, then you're probably going to want to skip this chapter.**

A look of determination crossed Charlie's features as she kicked her boots off, one after the other, her feet landing on the soft grass.

Bass arched a brow at her. Whether it was in surprise or challenge, she was just getting started.

Next went her belt, falling to the ground with a jangle, then her shirt was off again. Bass was soaking it all in from the look of determination on her face, to the lighter patches of skin where the sun couldn't reach her flesh as easily as that of her tanned arms, down to the way her hips wriggled as she shimmied out of her jeans.

She stood up straight, now in just bra and underwear, and her eyes locked with his as she reached behind her to unhook her bra. That too fell to the ground and moments later her panties fell around her ankles. She stepped out of them and gave him an expectant look.

There were subtle differences, like the tan lines and a faint scar he wondered the cause of, but for the most part she was as he remembered. He stirred a little at the sight of her.

Charlie was really starting to question her judgement as Monroe's eyes hungrily raked over her form. Part of her really wanted this and that was terrifying. She was having a hard time remembering what she had told herself her motives were.

He wasn't moving. He was just standing there, waiting for her to make the first move. She wasn't sure if he was trying not to spook her or if he was expecting her to back out now.

Either way, that wasn't going to happen.

Charlie closed the distance and then pounced on him. Before he entirely realized what was happening, he was on the ground and she was on top of him with her tongue in his mouth. All earlier signs of shyness had completely dissipated and he was starting to think that maybe this was about more than just trying to even the playing field for her.

She was wasting no time, so he stopped hesitating and let his hands explore, gliding over her soft skin, feeling the lean muscles just beneath, as he tried to memorize the feel of her body and searched for every subtle difference. Apparently, he still was taking more time than she would like, since Charlie reached a hand down to position him at her already dripping entrance.

She slowly sunk down into him, inch by inch, and gave herself a moment to adjust to his girth before she began to slowly move up and down on top of him, steadying herself with a palm on his chest. It wasn't long before she was already picking up the pace and breathing heavily.

Some sort of branch or rock was digging into Bass's back and at first he was able to ignore it, but eventually it was getting to be too much. He wrapped his arms tight, one around her waist and one around her back, so that he could take her with him as he sat up.

Charlie didn't seem at all perturbed as she took advantage of the new position to wrap both legs around his waist. Her heels were digging into his ass as her ragged breaths quickly turned into full blown panting and moaning. Her hair was falling in his face, getting in his eyes and mouth and tickling him with every thrust as she ground on top of him desperately.

He tried to ignore it at first. But when he practically choked on a strand, Bass drew the line and grunted out, "Hair."

She took the hint and left one arm wrapped around his neck while the other shoved her hair back out of her face, most of it landing behind her shoulders. He liked this view a hell of a lot better as an apologetic smile momentarily flashed across her features.

Charlie's hand landed back on his shoulder to steady herself and her eyes fell shut as she concentrated on the task at hand. She was biting down on her bottom lip so hard that it was starting to lose colour as she began to rock her hips back and forth, desperately trying to increase the friction.

Bass was absolutely mesmerized by her, so much so that he lost focus and she let out a little whine to notify him she was not pleased that he was slowing down. He sped up again and as she arched her back the last few strands fell over her shoulder.

Monroe's mouth moved to her neck, gliding down to her pulse point. Sure, that was nice, but it wasn't what she needed. Charlie didn't want long and drawn out. She didn't want sweet and slow. She wanted to get off now. All the sexual tension and lingering looks that had been building up for months were enough teasing. She wanted the pay off and she wanted it now.

He kept getting distracted just when she felt herself getting close and she was not going to stand for it any longer. She didn't care if this wasn't what he remembered. Hell, she didn't care if it was exactly what he remembered. She cared about one thing and one thing only.

Her heels were really digging in now. Her fingernails dug into his shoulders and back as her feet shifted and kicked at him while she adjusted so that her ankles were locked over each other behind him. She clearly was not playing around anymore.

Bass brought his lips to hers in a hungry kiss. His tongue slid past her lips and he began to lower her to the ground. One hand moved to her thigh, pulling her leg up to rest over his hip as her back hit the ground. Her breath hitched and he smiled triumphantly against her lips as his hand slid down between her legs.

Charlie was always on top where she could be in charge as much as she liked. It was practically a rule of hers at this point. She would have complained or tried to roll them over if it weren't for the fact that now he had the exact right angle to give her maximum pleasure as he thrust into her and the pattern he was tracing over her clit was enough to ensure that she had no arguments.

"Don't stop," she told him breathily as she squirmed and writhed and bucked up against him.

This time he wasn't hesitating or slowing down. His eyes were locked on hers and she was relieved that she was already so flushed he probably couldn't tell that her cheeks were burning at him seeing her like this. No, not just seeing her like this. He had gotten her to this point and now she was like putty in his hands and there was no way she was going to hold on for much longer.

Before she has wanted nothing more than sweet release, but now with his hot gaze boring into her and the lust in his eyes she found herself sucking in air and desperately holding out as long as she could.

Apparently, he could tell she was fighting it, since he muttered out, "Now's really not the time to be stubborn."

She was squirming beneath him, clearly on the brink, as she grabbed his face in one hand and brought her lips back up to him again to shut him up.

Charlie stopped kissing him back all at once. Her body tensed around him and for a moment her mouth went wide open, then she was biting down on his lip hard enough that he was sure she must have drawn blood. The hand that had been on his cheek before moved and knotted into his hair, pulling hard enough that his neck ended up at not the most pleasant of angles. Her legs were like a vice around him and all the while she was still bucking against him, completely erratically, as her back arched and fell back against the ground seemingly at random.

She finally eased her hold on him and her movements became slower and more methodical as her head fell back against the grass and she let out a contented sigh. There was blood on her lip from where she had bit down on his and when she caught her breath, her tongue darted out to wipe it clean. Fuck.

A small smile formed on her lips as she pointed out, "Your turn."

Her movements picked up a little again as her hands moved to his hips and her eyes met his.

Bass was breathing hard as he brought a hand to her leg and pulled up at it. She responded immediately by wrapping her leg higher around him. That was nice. Okay it was definitely more than nice, but it was only making the warning he was trying to give her more urgent.

"Legs," he panted out stupidly.

Charlie shot him a look of confusion, looking for more explanation, and then she finally realized that all of his concentration was elsewhere and he wasn't capable of giving her clearer instructions.

She loosened her legs, letting one of them fall off of him altogether, and hoped that was what he had been going for. That got cleared up pretty quickly though as he pulled out of her before he lost all control and blew his load in hot spurts that mostly landed on the ground, but also got her thigh.

He let out an exhausted breath as he fell back onto the ground. She watched his chest rising and falling heavily for a moment before she diverted her attention to cleaning herself up.

Bass was surprised when she got up from the ground and began to get dressed while he was still trying to catch his breath.

"Well," he commented. "Getting up immediately after isn't something you usually do."

Charlie turned to face him as she asked, "What? It's not up to your usual standard?" Her tone was unapologetic as she smiled and told him, "Sorry to disappoint you."

It had been different than being with the Charlie of his dream world, but then again he and Charlie had a different history and dynamic than they had in the dream world. Being with this Charlie hadn't been disappointing though. That was for sure. It wasn't perfect, not like it had been in the nanite world. That had felt real, but this somehow had felt even realer.

"I'm not disappointed," he responded as he watched her pull one of her pant legs back on. "Fucking in the woods to settle something is different than what we were up to as a couple." He regretted that wording immediately, but hoped she didn't think anything of it. "That doesn't make it worse though."

She was shaking off the grass that had gotten stuck to her shirt as she told him, "Well, I don't know about you, but I got what I wanted out of it."


	13. Chapter 13

Charlie was apparently having the sleep of her life still. Bass had gotten maybe an hour or two of sleep the night before, but whenever he had glanced her way during the night she had been fast asleep. Traitor.

It figured that she could sleep. She didn't have a care in the world. She did whatever she wanted. Charlie certainly hadn't lain awake last night trying to figure out what the hell they were or dwelling on what they had done. Hell, she had barely given their little tryst a second thought five seconds after it was over.

They couldn't leave until she woke up and Miles kept insisting that they should leave her alone while she was actually sleeping, since she could use the rest. Bass could use some fucking sleep too, but that wasn't an option for him. He just had to keep on sitting there, trying not to wake her up, like he had for the whole goddamn night. Hell, if she didn't wake up soon he was going to throw her in the wagon himself so that she could snooze as long as she wanted and at least they'd make a little progress. Then they could mark a few more miles his kid wasn't in, compared to the endless ones they could never cover.

He heard rustling and turned his attention over to where Charlie had just woken up and was stretching like a cat that had just taken a twenty-hour nap in the sunshine. She was still lying down and as she raised her arms over her head, her shirt slid up higher exposing a patch of flesh. Bass forced himself to ignore it and shifted his gaze up to her eyes just as they fluttered open.

"You look like shit," she told him in a hoarse voice.

"Good morning to you, too," he muttered out sarcastically, although in all reality it was closer to noon.

"It _is_ a good morning," she agreed with a smile as she sat up cross-legged. "I actually got some sleep last night."

"I noticed," he responded dryly. Some seemed like an under-exaggeration.

"Don't tell me you were watching me sleep again."

"I already told you I wasn't watching you," he grumbled out. "I've just been awake for most of your mini-coma. And you snore."

That was a lie, but there was no way she could know it.

The smile fell from her lips and she shot him a glare. She only became more irritated when he let out a chuckle in response to her scowl.

* * *

They made it to a town that night and headed for the local bar to ask if anyone had seen anyone matching Connor's description, since that was the place they were most likely to get an answer and he was most likely to have stopped on the off chance that he had actually been through there.

After half a night of asking around with zero luck, Monroe was sitting by the bar downing his fourth drink. Miles had been sitting with him at a table before, but Monroe had brushed him off to go sit by himself after Miles had made the mistake of cracking a joke that Monroe should try making fun of Connor, since that was what had made him show up last time they had been sitting in a bar with no idea of where to look for him.

Apparently, he was still just as grumpy as when he had stalked off, since when Charlie slid onto the stool next to him, he stared straight forward as he grunted out, "What do you want?"

"What? I'm not allowed to drink here?" She questioned. "Who said that's your decision to make?"

"I'm not in the mood, Charlotte," he said with a heavy sigh.

"Really?" She challenged.

He finally turned to look over at her as he demanded, "What?"

"You're calling me Charlotte again?"

If he didn't know better, he would have thought she was trying to mask her hurt with that tilted smile that wasn't sitting just right. Or maybe the nanites had gotten her smile wrong and he had gotten used to that lie, like all the others.

"Why? Does it bother you?" He asked in an amused tone. If she was going to pester him, then he was going to distract himself by pushing her buttons in return.

"Yes." She admitted.

"Why?" He challenged. "It is your name. Isn't it?"

She glanced down at the bar instead of staring him down and making some quip and that's when he realized that it was more than a pet peeve.

He took another swig from his glass as he waited to see if she was going to shoot a delayed comeback in his direction or if she was going to shrug the subject off.

"Why are you trying to intimidate me?" She questioned as she looked up at him with the fire back in her eyes.

"I'm not," he pointed out in a confused tone. "I was just trying to annoy you."

"No, you were trying to scare me off," she insisted. "Like you always are when you call me Charlotte. It's a General Monroe power move and I don't want to go back to thinking of you like that. I don't see why you'd want me to, either."

That struck his interest as he asked, "How do you think of me then?"

She ignored his question, of course, as she confessed, "You kept calling me it when you weren't really you. The nanites were using it to try to get under my skin. I thought you weren't actually like that anymore and it was just them trying to intimidate me. Now I'm not so sure. I mean, this isn't even the first time you've done it since you woke up."

He couldn't even remember the other time, but it had stuck with her. As soon as she had started asking about his dream world, he had pulled her full name out again.

"I'm not," he told her as he stared into her eyes seriously for once instead of staring her down. His voice came out softer as he told her, "I won't call you it again. Alright?"

Charlie hesitated. She wasn't sure she wanted to let him off the hook that easily, especially when he had openly admitted he had been trying to annoy her.

"I didn't know it bothered you that much," he pointed out.

"But you did know it bothered me," she countered.

"Yeah, well, between the sleep deprivation and no one having any clue where Connor is I'm not in the greatest mood tonight," he responded. "If it makes you feel any better, I was snapping at Miles, too."

She eyed him skeptically. "You're really not going call me it again? Even when you're trying to brush me off?"

"Really," he agreed. "And, clearly, I'm not succeeding at brushing you off. So, I guess you may as well go ahead with whatever it is you came over here for."

"I came to see if you wanted to make a deal," she told him. Her tone was guarded and his interest was piqued. Why was she nervous if she was the one coming to him with an offer?

"What kind of deal?" He asked. He was interested enough that he decided not to purposely be difficult.

"Don't read too much into this, but yesterday helped me sleep," Charlie told him. "So, if you wanted to make it a regular thing, I wouldn't object."

If he wasn't supposed to read _too much_ into it, then how much was an appropriate amount to read into it? He glanced around at the bar full of guys she could have been working on instead of sitting there with him. Maybe she wanted to use him just to help her sleep, but then why would she choose him over everyone else in the bar?

"What about yesterday?" He questioned as he furrowed his brow in mock confusion, even though he knew damn well what she was talking about.

"The sex," she responded bluntly.

"If you want me, all you have to do is ask," he told her with a cocky smile.

Charlie should have known that he would gloat about it. Hadn't she learned anything from last time?

"Are you in or not?" She asked himself an exasperated tone.

Of course, he was in. No matter what her motives were, this was a far better offer than he had ever expected to get.

Bass shrugged, pretending to be indifferent, then answered, "I guess we could give it a try."


	14. Chapter 14

"You don't really think we're going to find Connor. Do you?" Rachel questioned.

"I think we're more likely to run into the Easter bunny than find him, let alone convince him to do anything," Miles admitted.

"So, then, what are we doing here?" She asked. "If anything, Monroe's turning into more of an ass the longer we go without finding his kid."

"Sure. He's a little bitchy and not a lot of fun to be around," he agreed. "But at least I can keep him under control for now."

"And how long do we keep looking, not expecting to find anything, before we give up and go back to our lives?"

They had left her father, Aaron, and Priscilla behind and Rachel missed their company already.

"I don't know," Miles responded. "I guess when they seem like they're doing better enough that they can stand to be stuck in Willoughby without exploding."

"You really think this is helping them?" Rachel asked curiously.

"I haven't seen Charlie sleep this much in I don't know how long," he pointed out. "I thought it was just exhaustion catching up to her that first night, but she's slept in three days in a row now. That's gotta be more than a coincidence. And I'm not convinced Bass is sleeping at all, but at least he stopped drinking himself unconscious every night. That's a good sign. Right?"

The desperation in his tone when he asked that question gave away that he wasn't sure whether Bass was really improving or if that was just wishful thinking.

Rachel arched a brow at him, clearly not buying it.

"It might be a good sign," Miles tried in a defeated tone. "Trust me, he needs this. He needs to be able to say he looked for Connor, even if we don't find him."

* * *

"Getting dressed already again?" Bass challenged as he relaxed on the blanket Charlie had set up for them, with one arm folded behind his head as a make-shift pillow.

"Miles and my mom are going to be back soon," Charlie pointed out as she zipped her jeans back up. "We don't need them finding out that there's anything going on."

"That was my line, you know," he pointed out. When she stopped getting dressed for long enough to shoot him a confused look, he added, "In the dream world. I was the one trying to avoid your family finding out the wrong way and you were the one pointing out that they were going to figure it out eventually, no matter what."

Charlie stood with her arms through her shirt, but didn't pull it over her head yet, as she challenged, "So, if I wanted you to, you'd let them find out about whatever this is?"

"For you? Sure," he responded casually.

That caught her off guard, so she pulled her shirt over her head and smoothed out a few wrinkles to buy herself a moment to think.

"What? Just like that?" She asked when he still hadn't spoken up again. "No snarky comment?"

"You're right. Sorry. I only agreed to that for dream you and your dream family had a lot less reason to want to kill me." His cocky smile slipped back into place as he added, "Besides, dream you really went the extra mile in bed trying to convince me. But, if you want to give it a go, I could give you the details and we could try and reenact it."

Charlie rolled her eyes and looked away from his smug face to try to figure out where she had tossed her boots aside as she commented, "There's the guy I'm used to."

"And the one you chose to sleep with," he countered.

"Chose is a strong word. Settled for is more accurate," she pointed out. "And I'm not looking to advertise that. Trust me, you don't have to worry about them ever finding out from me."

"That's cold Charlie," Bass told her in a tone of mock hurt, although the smirk on his lips betrayed that he wasn't all that torn apart over it. "My feelings are hurt."

"More like your ego is bruised," she shot back unsympathetically. "And if you'd put your clothes on, you wouldn't have to worry about my mom and Miles finding out and you getting real bruises."

"Actually, I'm pretty sure I'm going to have a few of those either way," he commented with a shrug, although he did at least sit up and make an effort to look around for his clothes. "Are you always as rough as you are with me, or do you just have some pent-up anger you've been needing to let out?"

"I didn't hear you complaining during," she pointed out as she stared him down.

He decided it wasn't the wisest idea to press any further, at least for the time being, even if she had blatantly dodged his question.

"I don't mind it rough," he told her with a shrug as he stood up to pull his pants back on.

Charlie looked away and hesitated for a moment before she spoke up again, this time much softer. "You know, you could say something when I'm hurting you."

"Like I said, I don't mind."

* * *

When Miles and Rachel returned to where they had set up camp for the night, Charlie and Bass were fully dressed and sitting several feet apart in dead silence. Charlie was rooting through her bag for something, while Bass made himself busy sharpening a knife that hadn't been particularly dull to begin with.

"You get any sleep last night?" Miles asked as he stopped in front of Bass.

"Oh, yeah," Bass responded dryly. "Tons. I must have gotten a full half hour in."

"So, you're still just running on fumes," Miles commented in a tone that made Bass wish he could take his answer back and pretend he'd gotten a half-decent amount instead.

"I don't need the sleep," Bass insisted. "I was asleep on my feet for days while the nanites stuck me in their pretty little dream world. I just got back from a vacation. I'm all rested up."

He could feel Charlie eying him suspiciously without having to glance in her direction. Miles didn't look much more convinced. Apparently, he wasn't in the mood for an argument though, since he just nodded and stalked off to set up a blanket for him and Rachel.

Bass was in a bad mood though, so he turned his attention over to an easy target.

"Interesting how you have no problem sleeping at night," he spat out at Rachel, even though he knew he was only making sure that Charlie and Miles would get fed up with him sooner, rather than later.

"I'm letting that one slide because your kid wants nothing to do with you and you've barely slept in days," Rachel told him in a measured tone. "But think twice before you say anything else. Next time, I won't be so nice."

He didn't want Rachel to play nice. He wanted to start a fight.

"You not being nice?" He questioned with a laugh. "Like that'd be anything new."

Rachel rolled her eyes. She must have sensed he was trying to bait her because she didn't give him anything to work with.

"What's the matter?" Charlie asked. She was glowing as she smirked over at him and asked, "Got some pent-up anger you're dying to get rid of?"

"Cute," he retorted with a sarcastic smile, then realized it wasn't the wisest word choice for the situation.

"We get it," she responded in an exasperated tone that didn't match the smug look she was shooting in his direction. "You have a giant thing for me and you can't stop talking about it."

"Keep it up, Charlie," he deadpanned. "It's adorable."

She was the one who wouldn't stop bringing it up, if you asked him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **A/N: I'm just letting you guys know that I'm hoping to have weekly updates on this fic, at least for a little while, if all goes according to plan.**


	15. Chapter 15

When Charlie went to sit up, Bass loosely grabbed her forearm, then slid his hand down to hers. She glanced down at their intertwined hands and wondered which was stranger, that Sebastian Monroe was holding her hand or that she didn't mind.

"Don't worry," Bass told her without opening his eyes. "I know the routine. Get dressed while they're still gone so that we don't get caught. Just give me a minute, okay?"

Charlie was going to ask if she was so good that she'd given him a heart attack, but bit back her joke at the last second. He didn't look like he was having a heart attack. He looked perfectly relaxed.

"Fine, you can have one minute," she insisted as she slipped her hand out of his. "But I'm getting dressed."

Worst case, if she heard leaves crunching or twigs snapping, she could go meet Miles and her mom on their way back and distract them for long enough that Monroe could throw some damn clothes on.

"Whatever you want," he murmured, with his eyes still closed.

Charlie got dressed, then glanced back over at him. She felt a tightness in her chest at the sight of the slow and rhythmic rise and fall of his.

"Are you asleep?" She asked him, quiet enough that she wouldn't wake him if he was. She was slightly louder as she tried again, "Monroe?"

He didn't respond and she figured he could use the rest, even more than she could lately, so she didn't have the heart to wake him. Still, she couldn't leave him sleeping there naked, with his clothing scattered around, for her mom and Miles to find when they returned.

Charlie grabbed another blanket and carefully draped it over top of him. Even in the dim lighting, his bare shoulders stood out as suspicious, so she pulled the blankets up over his shoulders and was relieved when he shifted in his sleep to pull the blankets up against his chin.

She gently tucked the blanket underneath him on either side to try to ensure no bare skin would become exposed, then took a step back to admire her handiwork. He was still asleep and she was pretty sure that she wouldn't be able to tell he was naked if she hadn't already known. That meant there was just one step left.

Charlie gathered his clothes from where they were scattered along the grass and crammed them into the top of his bag, then decided to set up her own bed for the night. She was lying her blanket across a patch of grass when her mother and uncle returned.

"He's asleep?" Miles asked in a surprised tone as he glanced over at Bass.

Charlie shrugged. "He said he was really tired."

* * *

The next morning, Bass slept in even later than Charlie did. The longer he slept, the antsier Charlie got. She knew that she needed to do something to prevent her family from discovering that he wasn't dressed, but she wasn't sure what she could do to distract them that much.

When he began to stir, Charlie knew she didn't have time to come up with a plan anymore. She had to do whatever damage control she could.

"I'm going to go fill the canteens at that stream nearby," she commented as she rose to her feet and grabbed the bottles. "You want to come with, Mom?"

"Sure," Rachel agreed, much to Charlie's relief.

* * *

When Bass woke up, he had no memory of going to bed the night before. It wasn't until he rolled over and became suddenly suspicious that he wasn't clothed that he realized what had happened. He crinkled his nose, wondering how the hell he was going to get himself out of that mess.

"Let me guess," Miles commented in a tone that conveyed no emotion as he eyed the other man. "You're not wearing anything under there."

Bass lifted the blanket to double check, then admitted, "No, I am not."

"Well, you might want to put something on before Rachel comes back and puts two and two together," Miles told him as he began to repack his bag. He seemed perfectly indifferent to whether Rachel found out or not.

Bass tossed the blanket aside and rose to his feet, looking around with a frown, "What the hell did Charlie do with my clothes?"

Miles glanced around as if one or both of them wouldn't have noticed if she had left his clothes scattered about, before he shrugged and commented, "I don't know."

When Bass found his bag, leaning against a tree instead of where he had left it, he opened it to find that Charlie had crammed his clothes back in there. He pulled some clothes out as he eyed Miles suspiciously and questioned, "So, you're not pissed?"

"Charlie's an adult. She can make her own decisions," Miles pointed out. "Besides, you two helping each other out means less work for me and it seems like you're doing her some good."

"Yeah. Right," Bass snorted as he pulled a pair of jeans on. "I'm just here to tire her out so she can sleep."

"Good," Miles said, much to Bass's surprise. "She could use it."

"She told you she hasn't been sleeping?" Bass questioned as he unraveled the shirt which had been inside out in his bag.

"No, but I picked up on it," Miles responded. He showed human emotion for the first time in the conversation as he asked in a tone of sheer surprise, "Did she tell you?"

"Didn't have to," Bass said as he sat down to pull his boots back on. "It'd be kind of hard to hide it when we were both awake most of the night, every night."

"She's been having nightmares too," Miles added.

"Yeah, I kind of figured," Bass admitted.

"I think they're easing up now," Miles told him. "But it's hard to tell when she refuses to talk about it."

"Well, she sure as hell hasn't said anything to me," Bass responded. "But it seems like she's been tossing and turning less in her sleep."

Charlie's nightmares had helped keep Bass awake too, since it was hard to sleep with her thrashing around and groaning a few feet away. In the dream world, he would have woken her up or snuggled up to her when she was having a bad dream. In the real world, both of those were bad ideas.

"How about you?" Miles asked.

"What about me?" Bass dodged, even though he knew exactly what his friend was asking.

"How have your dreams been lately?"

"You know," Bass trailed off with a smirk they both knew was just for show before he realized Miles wasn't letting him off that easily. "I've been dreaming about the usual. Puppies and rainbows and hot girls with their shirts off."

Actually, he'd dreamt that they had succeeded at finding Connor, only to have Connor make it clear just how disappointed he was that Tom hadn't succeeded at killing him. Not only had Connor wanted nothing to do with him, but, to add insult to injury, Charlie had rekindled her romance with Connor and taken off with him. The cherry on top had been Miles following Charlie and running off with them, leaving Bass completely and utterly alone once again.

"That bad, huh?" Miles questioned.

Bass's face fell as he insisted, "I'm fine."

"Bass."

"It's nothing," Bass shrugged. "I can handle a bad dream. At least I want to wake up then, right?"

* * *

"How have you been feeling lately?" Rachel asked as she watched Charlie fill one of the canteens with water.

"Fine," Charlie responded with a shrug.

"That's what you always say though," Rachel pointed out. "Isn't it?"

She had a point. Charlie had been brushing things off for a long time. Even before Jason's death, she had been hiding the fact that she had lost hope when the Patriots had shown up. She hadn't wanted to worry her family when they'd had bigger problems and she hadn't wanted to spoil their victory with her issues afterwards either. The problem with pretending to always be fine was that people didn't believe you anymore when you really were though.

"Maybe," Charlie agreed. "But this time I mean it. I hit a rough patch there, but I've been feeling a lot better lately. Really."

She was only exaggerating somewhat for her mother's benefit.

"Are you sure?" Rachel asked as she eyed her daughter.

"I'm sure," Charlie insisted. "You don't have to worry about me. I promise."

Rachel let out a laugh at that. "I don't think you understand how this parenting thing works. I'm always going to worry about you."

"Well then, there's no need for extra worrying then," Charlie assured her.

"Good," Rachel told her. She hoped her daughter was telling the truth.

* * *

As he watched Rachel and Miles load the wagon, Bass took a step closer to Charlie. He kept his eyes on the other two as he told her, "Thanks… for letting me sleep, I mean."

"Don't worry about it," she told him, then cracked a smile when he glanced over at her. "You're less annoying when you're asleep, so I was doing us both a favour."

"Right," he agreed sarcastically. "I'm sure that's the only reason you risked getting caught. Miles knows now, by the way. Surprisingly, he doesn't seem to care all that much."

"You said you'd let them find out if I wanted you to," Charlie pointed out with a shrug. "So, I didn't think you'd mind."

"I don't," he responded as he turned his gaze on her. "I thought you would though."

"And I never thought I'd hear you thank anyone for anything," she countered.

"Let it go to your head all you want, but just don't tell anyone," he told her, then smirked past her in the direction of the wagon. "We don't need Miles getting jealous."

* * *

"Hey, Miles," Charlie said in a tone Bass was sure meant trouble as she climbed onto the wagon. "Apparently, Monroe has manners now and he doesn't want you finding out."

"Charlie," Bass responded in a tone much more serious than she had been expecting him to react with.

"What?" Charlie asked, feeling genuinely confused, as she turned to where Bass had sat down across from her.

"I stopped calling you Charlotte because you don't like it," he pointed out. "Right?"

"Right," she agreed.

"So then, how about you stop calling me Monroe?" He asked.

She arched a brow at him, surprised that it bothered him when he had never brought it up before.

"Alright, Sebastian," she responded. He cringed and she crinkled her nose in agreement. "Yeah, I didn't like that one either." She hesitated for a moment, then tried, "Bass?"

His features relaxed. Clearly, he liked that one better. It was probably what she had called him in his dream world. She hoped it was what she'd been calling him and that the nanites hadn't twisted her into calling him some awful pet name. That thought made calling him Bass seem completely harmless.

"I guess I could get used to that," she admitted.

"Well, you already called me it once before this," he pointed out smugly.

"When?" Charlie asked in a tone of sheer confusion, since she remembered exactly when and why she had called him by his nickname instead of his last name.

"The other morning," he responded vaguely and she knew she had him beat.

"Oh," Charlie said, pretending like she had just realized what he was talking about. "You mean when you woke up from your happy dream with something to show for it?"

She was expecting him to react, so Bass kept his face perfectly neutral as she beamed over at him.

"Strange time to start calling me Bass," he commented nonchalantly.

"You better not have been happy dreaming about Charlie," Rachel warned him from the front of the wagon.

"He can dream about whatever he wants," Charlie said with a shrug. "Besides, it wouldn't be the first happy dream he had about me. Would it?"

"It's not like I can control it," Bass responded unapologetically. He turned to face Rachel as he added, "But if it makes you feel any better, she also played a big role in my nightmare last night."

"I did?" Charlie asked. Her smugness had disappeared from her expression and her voice.

"Yeah, but don't worry," Bass said as he stared over at Miles. "It wasn't just about you."


	16. Chapter 16

"I've never been more than an hour's walk away from this town. How about you?"

"I used to live pretty far away," Connor admitted with a shrug.

Sarah, a girl he had met that night at the bar, leaned closer to him. "Really? Where?"

"Puesta del Sol."

"I've never heard of it," Sarah admitted with a laugh. "Where is that?"

"Mexico," he responded.

"Wow, that's far away. How did you end up here?" She asked.

Connor took a sip from his drink as he considered how to dodge the question. He was interested in the brunette sitting next to him, but he wasn't looking to open up that can of worms.

"Long story," he brushed it off. "It would just bore you."

"I'm sure it wouldn't," she insisted with a wide smile.

"Maybe I'll tell you about it some other time," he offered.

"Yeah," Sarah responded and he could feel her mood shift. "It's getting late anyways. I should probably get home."

"You're right. I should probably get going too," he said as if that had at all been weighing on his mind.

"Well, I'll see you around town," she offered with a smile as she rose from her seat.

Connor watched her go, then let out a sigh. So much for his night. He could find someone else to hit on, but it was getting late and he wasn't sure he had the energy to start over again. Going home was starting to seem like a pretty good option, so he figured he'd chop the night up as a failure and try again the next day.

* * *

Bass hadn't wanted to wait until the next morning to find out whether his son was in the next town so, even though it was getting late, they had kept walking until they had hit the town instead of camping out outside of its boundaries.

"I'm heading to the bar," Bass commented. "Gonna go check if the bartender knows anything."

"Sounds like as good an idea as any," Charlie responded.

"You two try the bar then," Miles told them. "We'll walk around town and see if anyone knows anything. Alright?"

"Meet up at the bar after?" Rachel asked.

"It's a plan," Charlie agreed.

* * *

"I've got the bartender, you ask around the tables," Bass said as he and Charlie entered the bar.

Charlie nodded her head without argument.

A few tables later, Charlie still hadn't had any luck, but she decided to try one more table.

"How can I help you?" A man in his thirties asked suggestively as he looked Charlie up and down.

She felt her skin crawl, but decided to ignore his advance as she offered a friendly smile and told him, "I'm looking for someone. A guy in his twenties. He's got dark hair, pretty curly. Probably wearing a suit. Goes by Connor. You seen anyone like that around?"

"No, I haven't seen anybody like that," the man responded. "But trust me, whoever this guy is, you don't need him. I'm sure I have much more to offer than he ever could."

"Sorry," she told him with a faint smile. "I'm not interested. I'm just looking for my friend."

"Are you sure?" He asked. "Why don't you sit down. I'm Chad by the way."

"No thanks, Chad," she told him, starting to get a little annoyed.

"Are you sure? Why don't you give me a chance?" He asked. "I swear I'll surprise you. Let me buy you a drink."

Charlie frowned. "Actually, I'm here with someone."

"Well, if I was with a girl as pretty as you, I would never leave you alone," he insisted with a wide smile that made Charlie want to punch him in his perfectly straight teeth. "Sounds like you could do better."

* * *

Bass held back a sigh as he turned away from the bartender, having had as little luck as he had expected to.

He was surprised when Charlie came over to him and stopped much closer than could be necessary as she grabbed onto his arm. He arched a brow at her, but didn't step away from the contact.

"You're my boyfriend now," she offered as explanation.

"Am I?" He asked, then cracked a smug smirk.

"For tonight. The guy over there isn't taking rejection well," she explained. "And I don't have the energy to deal with him, so this is easier. I'd rather sit with you than him anyways."

He knew that she could handle the guy if she wanted to, but he was perfectly happy to play along.

"You want me to lay it on thick?" He asked as he snaked his arm around her waist and stepped closer to her.

"May as well," she responded. "He doesn't take hints well. But don't take advantage of me saying that."

"I won't," he promised as he moved so that his chest was pressed against hers. He brushed a piece of hair behind her shoulder, using the hand that wasn't already around her waist, then asked, "So, which guy is it?"

"The one behind me, sitting by himself," she responded. "He's probably staring at us. Seemed pretty insistent that I could do better, before he even knew who I was here with."

Bass glanced over her at the guy who was glaring daggers at him. He looked perfectly average and didn't look away, even as Bass met his eyes. Bass didn't like him one bit.

He turned his attention back on Charlie and kissed her on the top of the head to put on a good show that wasn't likely to piss her off, before leaning back far enough to meet her eyes as he commented, "Then let's find an empty table behind me."

When they settled on a table, Bass moved his chair closer to hers, then sat down on the same side as her with his arm draped casually over her shoulders. They were a good distance away from the guy who had been bugging her and they had a clear line of sight to the door, so they would be able to tell when Miles and Rachel returned.

"Did you have any luck with the bartender?" Charlie asked.

"None," he told her. "You have any?"

"Sorry," she responded. "You really don't have any idea where he might have run off to?"

"Last time I saw him, he made it pretty clear that he had nothing left and nowhere to go thanks to me," Bass answered. He shrugged, not wanting to stay on the subject of his and Connor's last encounter for too long, then asked, "You two spent a lot of time together. Did he say anything to you that could help?"

"We didn't really talk about that kind of stuff," she admitted. "I mean, we flirted and talked about you and what was going on with the Patriots and stuff, but he didn't exactly share a lot. He loved going on about how I didn't know anything about who he really was."

Bass resisted the urge to ask about their discussions about him as he commented, "I knew that was a long shot. This is all a long shot."

It was silent for a moment before he noticed Charlie staring intently at him.

"What?"

"You said you had a nightmare about me the other night," she pointed out. "What happened in it?"

"It wasn't just about you," he responded. "I dreamed that I found Connor, but he wanted nothing to do with me, then I ended up completely alone again when you and Miles took off with him. How about you? What are your nightmares about?"

"Isn't it obvious?" She asked. "Jason."

He had been hoping for more information than that, but the look on her face told him that she would not react well if he tried to pry any more information out of her.

"You still having them?" He asked.

"Sometimes," she admitted, then a teasing smile spread across her lips. "You're not that good in bed, you know. Having sex with you can't fix everything."

"Oh, so you think I'm good in bed?" He asked with a big grin.

"Like you didn't already know that," she commented. "Do you really think I'd keep coming back if you weren't?"

"I thought you just wanted to sleep," he taunted with a smirk.

"Is it weird that I don't completely hate this?" she asked.

"What?" He responded. "This trip that we're never going to actually find Connor on?"

She hesitated for a moment, then responded, "Yeah, that."

She turned her gaze away from him and suddenly the mood felt a lot more somber. Clearly, that had not been what she had meant.

"What don't you hate?" He asked. "What did you actually mean?"

"This," she said as she gestured between them. "Tonight. You don't suck as much as I used to think you did."

He smiled as he commented, "And you don't suck as much as you did in the dream world."

Her features contorted into a frown and she glared over at him when she realized what he was implying and Bass immediately regretted his words.

"Sorry. Bad joke," he told her.

"Well, if you're disappointed, you can try your luck with someone else," Charlie responded.

"No, I'm not disappointed," he insisted. "I'm glad you're enjoying the trial run."

"Is that what you think this is?" She challenged.

"Are you sure it isn't?" He asked. "You know, I'd be fine with keeping things going, even when you don't need help sleeping anymore."

"Well, I'm not sure we're going to have to worry about that any time soon," she admitted. "Maybe I've been having less nightmares and sleeping better thanks to you, but I also might have been overselling how much better I've been feeling lately."

He knew the feeling.

* * *

Bass's arm dropped from around Charlie's shoulders to resting casually over the back of her seat when he spotted Miles and Rachel entering the bar together. He hated ripping his arm away from her like that when she was clearly feeling down, but he figured Charlie was having a rough enough night already without her mom catching on to whatever it was that was going on between them. He was pretty sure Miles caught the action, no matter how swift it had been, but Rachel had been too busy watching Miles as she said something Bass could not hear from that distance.

"Any luck?" Miles asked as he sat down in the chair across from his niece.

Rachel took the remaining seat, next to Miles and across from Bass, without a word.

"Nothing. You?" Bass asked, even though he was sure he knew what the answer was going to be.

"No one's seen anyone that looks like him," Miles responded grimly.

"At least, not in the past few months," Rachel added.

That wasn't surprising. The odds that Connor had even passed through that town, let alone stuck out in someone's memory enough for them to find out any information about where he might have been headed, were beyond slim.

"Well, for all we know, we're headed in the complete wrong direction," Bass pointed out. "Don't worry, I didn't get my hopes up that this would be the town."

Or, at least he didn't get them up too high.

"Good," Miles responded, then his eyes surveyed Charlie and he froze. She hadn't said a word since they had sat down and her eery silence reminded him a little of how she had looked when he had found her after what had happened with Jason.

"Charlie?" He asked, then hesitated for a moment. "Are you alright? You're being awfully quiet."

She blinked over at him, but didn't say a word as she felt the other three's concerned looks bore into her. When she finally spoke up, she focused her gaze straight on Miles because he had been there in the aftermath. Miles was always there in the aftermath, looking out for her.

"We just left him there," she said, so quietly that it was hard to hear her over the noises coming from the other tables. She gathered a little courage and spoke louder as she added, "His body, I mean. We just left it there."

The silence that fell on the table was deafening, even if it was brief.

Bass's hand slid from the chair to her back and began rubbing slow circles over top of her shirt. If Rachel noticed, she didn't say anything about it.

"We barely made it out of there as it is," Miles pointed out carefully. "There's no way we could have done anything else without getting ourselves killed too. Do you really think that's what he'd want?"

Charlie shook her head slightly, but her expression remained grim.

"I know we didn't have time," she told him. "I know we had no option. I didn't even have to think about it. I just left him there. You're supposed to be the one trying to convince me we don't have time to bury the bodies, but I didn't even _consider_ it until we were well out of Austin. He screwed up his life and risked everything for us, for me, how many times? But, no matter what, I still kept him at a distance. Even after I killed him, I still didn't think about burying him like one of us until it was way too late."

He was dead because of her and she couldn't even treat him like he belonged in their group even enough to not leave his body rotting on the floor it had landed on.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she was conscious of Bass's hand rubbing soothing circles across her back. She was as grateful for the action as she was that he was keeping his mouth shut.

"You don't really think that he would have wanted to live if it meant killing you and being under the Patriots' control, do you?" Rachel asked softly.

"No," Charlie admitted. "But he deserved better than being brainwashed and put down like that. He deserved better than ending up rotting on the floor where we left him."

"He wanted you to be happy, right?" Miles questioned. "And he wanted the Patriots stopped. You did what you had to do to stop the Patriots. That's what he wanted and he wouldn't want you to make yourself miserable over it. You don't have to feel guilty for life going on after he died, even if it meant putting looking out for yourself over worrying about someone who was already dead."

She offered him a weak smile, but said nothing. She knew that everything he was saying made sense and he was right that her survivor's guilt wasn't what Jason would have wanted. That didn't make it pack up and leave though.

"You're going to be alright," Miles told her confidently. "You're a tough kid. I mean, you got shot in the head and got mad at me for trying to make you sit down for a couple hours."

"She _what_?" Rachel demanded.

Charlie frowned, then insisted, "That bullet _grazed_ me. I was fine. You were being over dramatic and wasting time."

Miles cracked a smile as she became more herself again.

"It knocked you out," Miles pointed out. "And then you cracked your head on the concrete. I thought you were dead."

"You're so dramatic, Miles," Charlie complained. "I mean, I humoured you for a little while, but you made me sit there and wouldn't let me do anything for _hours_."

"You were bleeding from the head," he insisted.

"I said I was fine then and I made it through things fine, didn't I?" She challenged.

"See?" Miles asked. "Clearly, you're tough. You're going to be just fine."

* * *

Connor let himself into the house he was staying at and flopped down on the living room couch with a sigh. The wooden frame creaked as his weight hit the cushions, loud enough to let on that he was home, but not loud enough to wake anyone else if they had decided to turn in early.

"Oh, good. You're alone."

Connor shot a glare over at Aaron, who was standing in the doorway that connected the living room to the kitchen.

"Glad someone's happy I struck out," Connor commented sarcastically.

"Well, it is nice to know that I can walk through my own living room without having to wonder if I'm going to walk in on you with some girl again," Aaron pointed out.

"Why are you letting me stay here if it's that much of a burden for you?" Connor challenged.

"Your dad's not my favourite person, but I owe him. He saved my life. More than once actually," Aaron responded. "Besides, if he came back and found out you left because I turned you away, he would definitely kill me."

"Think he'll kill Gene then?" Connor commented bitterly. He didn't believe his father would do anything that would upset the Mathesons so much, but he was still pissed about how Gene had tried to drive him away when he had first shown up in town again. "Probably not. And don't worry, he'd only kill you if Miles gave him the go ahead first, so you're probably safe unless you've done anything to piss him off lately."

"Does that mean I can instate a new rule that you can't have sex on my couch?" Aaron tried. "If I'm not getting killed either way?"

"I don't think so," Connor responded with a shrug. "It's my bed. Where else am I supposed to bring girls back to? Most of the girls here live with their whole families and aren't exactly eager to bring me back to their place."

"Fine," Aaron reluctantly gave in. "But can you at least put some clothes on before you go to sleep? Priscilla isn't a fan of you sleeping on our couch naked for half the day, with the blankets half thrown off."

"Alright, fine," Connor agreed. "I'll put something on before I go to sleep next time."

"Thank you."


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **A/N: There is some smut in this chapter, so if anyone's uncomfortable with that, then you may want to skip that part.**

"I've got the bartender this time," Charlie commented as they walked into the bar of yet another town. "I know him."

That, of course, raised Bass's curiosity as he turned to look in the direction of the bartender. The guy was attractive and much more age appropriate for Charlie. Maybe that was what caused Bass to follow close behind her, or maybe it was the way the guy's whole face lit up the instant he spotted Charlie headed in his direction. Apparently, Miles and Rachel were also curious about how she knew him, since they tagged along as well.

"Charlie! I didn't think I'd see you again," the bartender greeted her with a dazzling smile. He turned his gaze on Bass for a split second before turning his full attention back to Charlie again. "I see you found Monroe. Was he still in New Vegas?"

"Just like you said," Charlie responded with a friendly grin. Bass should have been thrilled to see her look so happy. Instead her beaming smile felt like nails on a chalkboard to him.

Perfect. On top of Charlie getting back in touch with some guy who could make her smile way easier than he ever would, even if he specifically tried, this guy also happened to be the one who told her where to find him when she was trying to kill him.

Apparently, the bartender mistook the glare Bass was pointing in his direction for confusion about how he knew Bass was in New Vegas, since he flashed a branded wrist in his direction and commented, "I'm Jeff. We met once a long time ago. You probably don't remember it."

Bass wasn't going to dignify that with a response, but then Charlie turned to him with curious eyes and caught him glaring in her old friend's direction so he grumbled out, "You're right. I don't."

Jeff didn't seem bothered by the look Bass was giving him or his tone. Maybe Bass was losing his touch. Was he going soft like Miles? That couldn't be it. Jeff must just be too distracted by Charlie to even properly notice or acknowledge the tension.

"So," Jeff said as he turned his attention back on Charlie. He clearly had a one-track mind. He still hadn't so much as glanced in Rachel and Miles' direction for more than a second and, apparently, he didn't feel any need to be introduced to them. "What brings you back here? Was it the riveting conversation?"

Charlie let out a laugh that rubbed Bass the wrong way. Nothing the bartender said had been funny, unless there was some deeper meaning he didn't understand. But he didn't even want to think about that.

"No. Actually, I'm looking for someone else this time," she explained. "Have you heard anything about a guy named Connor anywhere around here lately?"

Jeff shrugged, then moved so that he was leaning closer to her with his forearms pressed against the bar. "No, but it's not like I learn the name of everybody that walks in here. And even the ones I do learn, I don't necessarily remember. What's this guy look like?"

Bass barely heard Charlie's description, since he was too busy focusing on the way that Charlie didn't move away when Jeff leaned across the bar towards her and how bartender Jeff couldn't be bothered to remember for certain whether he'd met a Connor, but he had no trouble at all remembering Charlie the instant he saw her, even though it had been like a year since he must have last seen her.

Bass wasn't sure if anything had happened between the two, but it was clear that Jeff wanted something to happen now that she was in his bar again. Bass couldn't help but notice how Charlie made no attempt to shut him down, or pretend she had a boyfriend, or even subtly hint that she wasn't interested, which meant she probably was interested. Which meant he was fucked. Or more accurately, she was going to move on and fuck someone else now that there was someone better around.

He shouldn't have been so pissed off. She'd made it pretty clear that this was just a casual thing for her. She wasn't even necessarily encouraging Jeff's flirting, although she seemed to be enjoying it. Charlie wasn't his anyways. She wasn't anyone's. This was the first time he'd seen her in this good of a mood in a long time and it was a refreshing change after how somber things had been over the last few days, since Charlie had admitted details about how Jason's death haunted her. He couldn't ruin that, even if it meant draining the last ounce of hope in his system by staying in yet another town where no one knew Connor and, even worse, where Charlie had found someone she thought was more worth her time.

Bass was dragged out of his thoughts when he felt Miles' eyes on him. Miles could obviously tell he was jealous. There was no point trying to hide that from him. But had Miles started looking at him to try to gauge his reaction because something that had been said about Connor? Bass tried to tell from the look on Miles' face, but Miles was looking down at Bass's hand, so Bass looked down to find that he had balled it into a fist so tight that his knuckles were turning white.

He forced his shoulders to relax, or at least lower, and loosened his hands. He didn't need Miles worrying about him, just like he didn't need Rachel or Charlie detecting the potent smell of jealousy wafting off of him. When Miles looked away, Bass tuned back into the conversation to try to see if Jeff had said anything remotely useful about how to find his son, but it was clear the subject had changed since that portion of the conversation, which must have meant that he had known just as much nothing as he had first responded with.

"How long are you staying in town for this time?" Jeff asked with curiosity dripping in his tone. He probably wanted to figure out how many nights he could keep Charlie in his bed for. At least Bass knew Charlie wasn't about to settle down in a random town in the middle of fucking nowhere just to stay with some bartender, but things were going to be awkward when they kept going on their trip afterwards. How was Bass supposed to pretend like he couldn't care less about being just the nearest option that could and would easily be replaced anytime she stumbled across someone who didn't disgust her?

"Just the night," Charlie responded.

"You're sure?" Jeff asked with a hint of desperation that Bass was sure Charlie was going to pounce on.

Instead, she shot him another smile as she explained, "I've got things to do. Places to go."

They weren't exactly having a hell of a lot of success and the point of the trip was for Charlie and Bass to distract themselves so they might feel a little less like dying and it seemed like staying in town would do the trick for Charlie. But Bass wasn't sure he could make himself sleep alone in this hellhole of a town, knowing they were staying there just so Charlie could bang Jeff's brains out a few more times while Connor gained more and more ground on them, going wherever the hell it was that Bass would never find him. So, he bit his tongue instead of offering to stay an extra night or two. Maybe he could force himself through it if Charlie asked, but he wasn't about to suggest it.

"That's too bad," Jeff told Charlie. "But, if you're interested-"

Bass was relieved when Charlie spoke up before he had to hear the end of that offer.

"Sorry," she said in that friendly tone she'd been using on Jeff since they had arrived. "I'm just here to talk this time."

Bass's head became clouded as he struggled to figure out what game Charlie was playing. Apparently, she'd slept with this guy before and Charlie had made it pretty clear lately that she needed sex to help her fall asleep. This guy was offering it up, no strings attached for the night, and Charlie was turning him down even though the two had clearly been getting along well. Was the guy just bad in bed? Was Charlie just not in the mood? Or just maybe did this have something to do with him?

He needed to sit down somewhere. Charlie had turned Jeff down. She didn't have to do that. That was more than enough to make Bass worry less about Jeff's flirting and more about figuring out what exactly was going on with Charlie, so he turned away without a word and headed towards an empty table in the corner of the bar. He slowed down to let Miles catch up as he began to follow and overheard Jeff commenting on him and Charlie.

"Monroe likes to keep you moving, huh?" He asked. "How many others like you does he have still loyal to him?"

Charlie could feel her mother giving her a look for that comment. Rachel sat down on one of the stools across from Jeff instead of following Miles and Bass. Clearly, she was more interested in figuring out how Jeff had come to the understanding that Charlie was a militia loyalist than she was in sitting at a table with Sebastian Monroe.

"I don't think anyone's willing to blindly follow him," Charlie pointed out in an attempt to dodge lying and getting a reaction out of her mother, while not denying having been in the militia. It was much easier to let Jeff keep thinking she had been militia than it was to explain how she had really gotten her branding.

"He's still trying to get back the republic though?" Jeff questioned.

"He considered it for a while, but no," she responded, then realized that she had no actual confirmation that he didn't still want to rebuild with Connor. The way things were now, she doubted he'd bother going to the effort of reforming the republic, but who was to say that he wouldn't decide to rebuild if it was the key to getting his son back? "Or, at least, I don't think he's planning on it anytime soon."

* * *

"That girl over there is staring at you," Miles commented. "She looks interested. I can't imagine why."

"Thanks for that," Bass responded sarcastically. "But I'm pretty sure she's checking you out. You should go talk to her. I'll even distract Rachel for you."

"Stop it," Miles grumbled.

"You sure you don't want to go over there? See if you can trade up?"

"You're not funny," Miles complained. "I'm not breaking up with Rachel just because you can't decide if being around her makes you feel more pissed off or guilty."

Bass decided to let that one slide, since it was Miles after all. "What makes you think I was joking? You know I've never liked you and her."

He had been joking. Mostly. Although he wouldn't exactly be distraught if Miles did dump Rachel for some random woman at the bar. It would make for one hell of an uncomfortable trip home though. It was probably better if Miles stuck with her, at least until they got back and Bass could get a safe distance away from the fallout. Not that he had ever been able to escape the post-relationship Rachel and Miles drama before.

Miles let out a humourless laugh. "Sure, if that's your story."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Bass questioned.

"You never once thought I'd be better off with Rachel than without her?" Miles challenged.

Bass could see where this was going, but there was no way to dodge it without admitting it himself or getting in a game of chicken with Miles, so of course he chose chicken.

"No. Not once," Bass agreed. "In what world is this new information, Miles? She was with your brother when you met her."

"So, you never once called me an idiot for breaking up with her?" Miles accused. "You never spent months telling me how stupid I was for breaking things off and telling her to go start a family with Ben instead?"

Great. Miles was pulling out specifics, which meant Bass was going to lose no matter what.

"Alright, fine. Yes, I spent months telling you that you should get back to Rachel and that you were an idiot for ending things," Bass admitted. "But that's only because you spent months torturing me with your bitching and moaning about how you missed her and complaining about how she did exactly what you told her to do. So, fine. Maybe I thought going back to helping you two sneak around would be easier than listening to you whining like a broken record. And I still think you're an idiot for telling her not to leave Ben for you and then complaining about how painful it was that she was still with him."

Apparently, Miles didn't like where the conversation was going, since he veered the subject in a different direction.

"So, I'm guessing nothing happened between me and Rachel in your dream world then."

"No way. You were with Nora. Didn't I tell you that?"

At Miles look of surprise, Bass realized that Miles had not already known that. He had only told Charlie that part. That was weird.

"No," Miles responded. "Did you tell Charlie about that?"

"Yeah, why? You afraid she's going to revoke her signing off on you and Rachel?" Bass questioned.

Bass had always had an unhealthy tendency of latching onto people, but Miles was surprised that Bass was no longer latching his whole existence onto him in Connor's absence. Sure, Bass needed him and he was still co-dependent as hell, but it seemed that he had latched onto Charlie lately as well. That should have terrified Miles, but instead he thought that maybe it was a good thing for Bass to be attached to someone else. Someone better. Bass had always tried to do whatever he thought would help Miles, even when his perception of what would please Miles was way out of whack. But Charlie was a much better person than Miles was. Maggie had said that Charlie could save him and she was right. Charlie was his moral compass and Bass was in need of one too. There was no doubt that he still took things too far and made bad decisions, but Bass had helped them a lot and he had sacrificed his relationship with his kid to do the right thing. If Charlie had anything to do with that at all, then Miles was happy to have Bass latched onto her and not someone else.

"How much have you told Charlie about your dream?" Miles asked.

Bass shrugged. "I don't know. She asked about it a lot. Wouldn't back down until I gave her some answers and then bothered me until I gave her even more."

That sounded about right to Miles. Apparently, Bass was concerned that Miles was feeling left out though. Maybe he was, just a little, as sick as that felt.

"I probably would have told you more if you had asked. Or if you didn't spend so much time alone with Rachel. I mean, that's when it came up anyways. Besides, you already know me better than anyone. You're the one who somehow figured out I wasn't really me. I'm sure you could guess at most of the stuff without me having to tell you."

"I think Charlie's good for you," Miles told him. "And it's nice to get a break from being the only one you talk to about anything."

"Yeah, well, Charlie doesn't do a hell of a lot of talking with me," Bass responded. "Just plucks information from me and uses me to help herself sleep. And I keep letting her because I'm stupid enough to like it."

* * *

Charlie was surprised when her mother led her out of earshot of the bar instead of heading towards the table where Miles and Bass were already sitting.

"Why did you turn Jeff down?" Rachel asked.

Charlie couldn't believe that her mom had actually pulled her aside to ask why she hadn't chosen to sleep with a guy she was almost certainly never going to see again after that night.

"You're kidding, right?" She asked.

"Is it because of Monroe?"

That was a shock to the system. Charlie quickly composed her features, then arched her brow in challenge. "Why would it have anything to do with Monroe?"

This had to be a trap and there was no way she was going to fall for it. Just because her mom knew Bass had a thing for her in his dream world, didn't mean she had any idea that Charlie felt anything above indifference towards him.

"You do realize I have eyes, right?" Rachel challenged.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Charlie asked in a measured tone.

"You think I couldn't tell that he wasn't wearing clothes that night he was asleep when we came back?" Rachel questioned.

"What?"

She had known all that time? Then why hadn't she said anything? Was she bluffing? Had Miles said something?

"I thought maybe it was just a one-time thing, but then he wouldn't keep his hand off your back when you were talking about Jason and you weren't stopping him," Rachel told her. "Obviously, there's something going on. Jeff seems nice and, clearly, he's interested. Are you really turning him down for Monroe?"

"We're only here for one night," Charlie pointed out. "It's not like I'm going to start anything with Jeff."

"No, but it seems like you like him," Rachel responded. "What? Are you looking to start something with Monroe?"

"No," Charlie insisted, then immediately realized she had said it too quickly. "I don't know. It's not like it's serious or anything, but he's there. So, why not?" That question was a mistake. Charlie braced herself for a list a mile long of reasons why not. "And it's not like I have that great of a dating history, especially lately. I mean, you should be glad. If things turn out the way they usually do, then you won't have to put up with him for much longer. Jason wrecked his life for me and wound up dead for it and Connor was a casual thing, but he still ended up going all power hungry and running off."

"Have you considered that your taste in guys has something to do with that?" Rachel asked. "Dating a guy who was in the militia and then sleeping with Monroe's kid who only followed him because he wanted a republic handed to him had a lot to do with the way things turned out. Don't convince yourself that Monroe's someone he isn't just because he's the only consistent option."

Sure, things had been complicated with Jason, but he hadn't deserved to die because of it and he had been a good choice for her. He had looked out for her. He would have died for her. He  _did_  die for her. She was the one that was the bad choice for him. And she was the one who had told Connor it wasn't anything serious. She hadn't really given him any reason not to run away. She wasn't even sure she was sorry that things had ended between them, even if she wished he hadn't switched sides and bailed.

Charlie wasn't even sure how she felt about Monroe or whether she wanted things to develop or not, so she decided to avoid any further conversation about that and tried to shift the subject instead.

"So, if you've known about this for almost two weeks, then why is he still in one piece?"

"I'm not making any promises about him staying that way," Rachel insisted. "But you don't need any more dead flames on your hands. And Miles seems to think Monroe's helping you, so I guess I can try to tolerate him for a little while, if it means getting to see you happier. Besides, you're not a little girl anymore. And we both know that I can't stop you from doing anything. Trying to usually just makes you more determined. Although, you did look a hell of a lot happier talking to Jeff just now-"

"Mom!" Charlie interrupted her with a groan, although she was secretly overjoyed that her mother was taking the information this well. Or, at least, she was pretending to take the information well. Miles was probably going to get the joy of hearing all of her concerns later. Maybe he deserved it if he'd clued her in. "And since when do you and Miles secretly talk about my sex life and whether or not it's benefitting my well-being?"

"Miles didn't say anything," Rachel insisted.

"You just said he thinks Bass is helping me," Charlie pointed out.

"He said it in as vague of terms as possible," Rachel responded. "He started talking about how much better you were sleeping and how the trip must be doing something for you right around the time I figured out you were sleeping with Monroe. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what he meant."

"Look, it isn't anything serious," Charlie defended herself. "Okay?"

"Does he know that?"

Rachel hoped what her daughter was saying was true, but she had convinced herself the same thing about her and Miles many times over the years.

"I think I've made it pretty clear," Charlie insisted. "And I can handle it if he doesn't."

"You know, I've had a few relationships with guys my parents weren't fond of either," Rachel admitted.

"Like Miles?"

"Like Miles," Rachel agreed. "But, also, a lot of guys when I was around your age who I can't imagine what I saw in anymore. Some of them I definitely regret, but some were a good fit at the time, even if they never would have been later. You can see whoever you want, Charlie. You have every right to go through as many phases and bad relationships as you need to before you find yourself a good one."

Charlie wasn't entirely sure if her mother's intention was to warn her about Monroe or to support her ability to make her own decisions without supporting deciding on Monroe specifically. At least she probably wasn't going to kill Monroe, even if she was referring to him as a bad relationship doomed to fail. Although, it wasn't like Charlie referred to their whatever it was in much more generous terms.

"It's not a relationship," Charlie insisted. "I don't know what it is."

"Well, whatever it is, if he hurts you in any way I'm going to become a lot less civil with him."

"I'll be sure to pass that message along," Charlie responded, although she was sure Bass was already fully aware of the risks he was taking sleeping with her.

* * *

"Your friend was real helpful," Bass commented sarcastically as Charlie sat down next to him at the table. "He didn't know anything, but he sure had no problem hitting on you in front of everyone. Hard to believe you fell for his fake charming act the first time around."

Charlie frowned. "Jeff's nice and I didn't fall for anything. I'm the one who could hardly get him to stop talking last time."

"Yeah, you like to keep your conversations separate from your pleasure," Bass grumbled. "Don't you?"

"I'm talking to you right now, aren't I?" She challenged. "Although with conversations like this, who could blame me for wanting to keep things separate? Are you really this jealous, or are you just pissed again because no one knows where Connor is? You do remember the part where I turned him down for you, right?"

Bass didn't even answer her. He just stared at her like an idiot. What angle was she playing, admitting to sleeping with him in front of her mom and Miles? And had she really just said she'd turn nice guy Jeff down for him?

Charlie realized what she had admitted too late. She wanted to take it back and tell him it hadn't really been for him, but it wouldn't be convincing and she didn't want to put him on the defensive. She didn't want to encourage him getting all jealous and possessive over her either, though.

"I heard it too," she told him. "Don't make a bigger deal out of it than it is."

Bass obliged by changing the subject instead of asking how big of a deal it was then.

"So, Jeff seems to think you were militia and never got over your undying loyalty to me," he commented in a carefully guarded tone. "What's that about?"

"He was a one-night thing," Charlie pointed out. "It's not like I was going to go in detail correcting him. He saw the branding and figured I was militia. He saw you show up again with me and assumed I believed in the Monroe Republic."

The silence at the table was thick.

"Right, that," Bass said as he felt his mouth go dry. "I noticed the branding- I mean, obviously, I saw it. If I hadn't noticed it before, I definitely would have when you were naked."

Bass cringed internally as he glanced in Rachel's direction. Of course, she didn't look pleased. He wasn't sure if it had to do with the subject of the M branded on her daughter's wrist or if it was because he had picked probably the worst time to remind everyone about how he had seen her daughter naked.

He turned back to Charlie as he admitted, "I've been wondering about how you got that, but I didn't want to ask. I thought it would be weird."

It wasn't particularly not weird not knowing, but at least no context meant he could feel guilty in a general sense instead of having to picture the details of how she had wound up with the branding.

"Got it at one of your training camps," Charlie responded. "Got myself thrown in to help get a kid out, picked a fight with the biggest guy there, and earned this souvenir."

She pulled her sleeve up slightly and he came face to face with a glaring reminder of why they absolutely should not be together. This wasn't the perfect reality where he had never fucked up so badly and people all over, including her family members, hadn't been lost because of him and his mistakes.

The branding on her wrist was not exactly the Matheson and Monroe that was it had been supposed to stand for in the first place.

"I never wanted you to end up with one of those. If it makes you feel any better, the M didn't just stand for Monroe originally," he told her, even though he was well aware that it would not make her feel any better about it. But Rachel was watching him closely and Miles was keeping perfectly silent because Charlie's branding was probably a sore spot for him too, so someone had to fill the silence instead of just staring at her wrist.

"I know," she retorted. "M for militia member."

"No, I don't mean the brandings. I mean the symbol," Bass told her, even though he knew it was a dangerous game and there was at least a fifty percent chance Miles was going to be pissed at him for this. "It stood for Matheson too, long before the power even went out. We used to draw them on all the time when we were kids. We were supposed to get matching tattoos, but Miles chickened out on me."

"I didn't chicken out," Miles grunted out. "I decided we had terrible taste in tattoos as ten-year-olds. It's not my fault you never figured that out."

"But you don't have any tattoos," Charlie pointed out as she stared straight at Bass, once again reminding them all that she had seen him naked enough to know he didn't have a tattoo hiding somewhere on his body.

"Not anymore," Bass agreed. "Burned it off. Didn't need it IDing me while I was on the run. You know, you should take nice guy Jeff up on his offer."

"You're kidding me, right?" Charlie questioned. "Five minutes ago, you were being a jealous dick."

Miles shot Bass a look that needed no translation.  _Ten minutes ago, you were happy to let her use you._

"Yeah, well, he's a limited time offer and you don't have a scar in the shape of his initial," Bass retorted. "Plus, he doesn't seem like a jealous dick."

Charlie's brow furrowed for a moment, then she composed herself and shrugged. "He talks too much."

Bass had been talking quite a bit himself that night too, which almost certainly meant she was hiding her real reason. That meant it probably had to do with him. He felt incredibly relieved and incredibly disgusted at that relief as he wondered if she was just sticking around him, even with better options around, as a way to punish herself for what had happened with Jason.

Miles broke the silence as he pointed out, "It's getting late. We should find somewhere to sleep in town or head out to find somewhere else to stop for the night."

"Do you think Jeff has extra room?" Rachel asked.

"Not enough. His place is pretty small," Charlie pointed out. Besides, she didn't need to reject him and then invite herself, her family, and the guy she's sleeping with to spend the night at his place.

"You know of anywhere else we might be able to stay here?" Miles asked.

"Not really. I was barely here one night and I stayed with Jeff," Charlie responded. "We could ask around, but I doubt there's anywhere willing to take all of us in."

* * *

In the end, they wound up at a long since abandoned farmhouse about half an hour out of town by wagon. Miles and Rachel grabbed a bedroom upstairs and Bass grabbed the one at the opposite end of the hall. In between the two rooms stood a bathroom, a linen closet, and a third bedroom.

Charlie paused and looked in the direction of the closed door to the room her mother and uncle had claimed, then at the open door to Bass's room.

She could go to the third bedroom and avoid a potentially awkward encounter after how strange Bass had been acting all night. Or, she could join him in his room, without having to worry about Miles or her mom finding out what was going on anymore.

Finally, Charlie turned left and decided to at least test the waters with Bass.

He had already tossed his bag on a chair in the corner of the room. His shirt and boots had been removed and he turned to look at her as he unzipped his jeans.

She shut the door behind her and set her bag carefully on the floor.

"You mind if I sleep here?" She asked. After the way he'd acted at the bar, she felt unsure enough that she had to ask.

"Do you wanna sleep here?" He asked.

"That depends," she said. "Are you still trying to pawn me off on someone else? Or are you back to acting super possessive?"

He shrugged. "Neither at the moment, as far as I know."

"What was with you telling me to sleep with Jeff anyways?" She asked.

"I was giving you an out. Figured you might want to use it after talking about your branding."

"Well, I thought you'd want me to sleep in here," she countered. "Having a bed, sleeping together... Sounds sort of like your dream world."

"Sure does," he agreed.

"And sleeping inside with separate rooms means we don't have to worry about my mom and Miles coming back," she added. "We can take our time."

He arched a brow at her. "I thought you were all about getting things done as quickly as possible and taking off right after."

"No," she told him. "That was better for not getting caught and this not turning into a thing, but I don't prefer it."

"Does that mean you want us to be a thing now?" He questioned.

"I don't know," she responded as she kicked off her boots. "I don't want to think about that now."

"Right. You don't want talk," he repeated.

"No. I don't want to talk right now."

He took a step back and sat down on the edge of the bed.

She slipped her jeans off, then walked over and joined him on the bed, straddling his lap as she wrapped her arms around his neck. He slid his hands just below the hem of her shirt as he gazed up at her.

This was dangerous territory. It was harder for him to pretend this didn't mean anything to him when she was looking at him like that instead of rushing to get release and then to sleep. This was a step closer to what things had been like in the dream. It was a step closer to something real, even if he was fooling himself imagining that as a possibility. He wasn't sure he minded.

Bass arched his neck to get close enough to kiss her neck, trailing from just below her jawline to just above her collarbone. She had said they could take their time, so that was sure as hell what he was going to do. He wanted to show her just how much better it felt when they didn't rush. He wanted her to know what it felt like to really be with him, take it or leave it.

She leaned into him, pressing her weight against him, and he held her to him as he lowered his back onto the bed. Charlie pulled her neck away from his mouth so that she could cover his mouth with hers.

She wasn't pouncing on him like an animal or fighting for control. She hadn't even pushed her tongue into his mouth. This kiss was tamer than her usual approach, but it felt much more real than it had any of the other times.

This was everything she usually avoided. It was everything she wouldn't let herself do and feel with him, usually. But she had already chosen him over Jeff and the possibility of someone else. Obviously, she wanted this. Physically they were compatible. That worked for them in a fight and it worked for them in bed. The physical aspect of their relationship was all she was sure about. She didn't need to hide that anymore.

His hands slid up the back of her tank top until they found the clasp of her bra. He undid it, then she untangled her arms from him to pull it off under her shirt and toss it aside, all without her lips leaving his.

She could feel him through the fabric of his boxers and her underwear as she opened her lips to grant his tongue access. Her hands slid down to his chest, but no lower.

He wrapped his arms around her and rolled over so that he was hovering over her with her back flat on the bed. He brought his mouth to her stomach and pushed her tank top up above her naval to bare her midsection. Charlie watched him for a moment with her fingers tangled loosely in his hair, then let her head fall back against the mattress as he gravitated lower until he reached the top of her black panties.

She thought he was going to remove them, but instead she felt a shudder run through her as he ran his tongue over her core through the fabric.

Bass trailed kisses back up her body until his mouth was on hers again. She moaned against his mouth and spread her legs as he began to rub her through her panties with his thumb. Her shirt was pushed up over her breasts, bunched at her collarbones, and he could feel her bare chest pressing against his.

* * *

Rachel tried to zone out the noises coming from the other end of the hall as she asked, "How long have you known about them?"

"Him sleeping naked in the middle of the woods was kind of a hint," Miles responded. "He admitted it the next morning, but it's not like they talk to me about it or anything."

She shot him a doubtful look.

"Alright, so maybe Bass said a few things," he admitted. "He seems to think she's not taking things seriously, but he's willing to take whatever he can get with her. What about Charlie? She say anything to you?"

"Not much," she responded. "Apparently, it's not a big deal, but I don't know. She says they're not in a relationship, but she's turning guys down to stay with him because he's there."

"Is that the worst thing?" Miles questioned. "Bass cares about her. She knows what she's getting herself into and he doesn't care if she's just using him. Are they gonna last? I don't know, probably not. But if they're happier together now, then what does that matter?"

"I just hope things end well," Rachel insisted.

* * *

Charlie melted into the mattress and struggled to catch her breath as she quivered with pleasure. She couldn't believe she had wasted so much time fighting for control with Monroe when it felt so good to hand over the reins. His experience was showing in all the right ways.

"You like that?" He asked as his head emerged from between her legs and he shot her a smug smirk that suddenly didn't bother her all that much. He moved so that he was hovering over her again. His smirk didn't falter for a second.

She grinned up at him as she asked, "What tipped you off?"

"Hmm. Well, the first orgasm was a hint," he responded in an amused tone.

"Was it?" She asked as she tugged at the waistband of his boxers.

"I still had to test the theory though," he told her.

"And did the second one confirm it, or are we just going to keep trying again?" She teased.

"Do you want to try again?" He asked suggestively.

"Definitely," she agreed. "But not now. Now, I want to deal with this."

He let out a groan as her hand dipped into his boxers to grab him.

"That idea sounds good too," he assured her.

"These need to come off," she insisted as she pushed his boxers down below his hip bones. "You're overdressed."

Her remaining clothes had been shed long ago and it was about time he caught up when he stood and dropped his boxers to the floor.

He jumped back on the bed beside her and gave her a flirtatious smile as the bed creaked horribly in protest. He made himself comfy, even stopping to fluff a pillow before he leaned back on it and asked, "Now, what are you going to do with me?"

She sat up and swung her leg over him, so that she was hovering above him with her knees on either side of his hips. She steadied herself with one hand on the centre of his chest and the other reached between her legs and stroked his erection as she stared into his eyes.

"Take my time," she responded as she carefully positioned him at her entrance. She slowly sunk down, adjusting to his size as she slid down to his base.

His hands moved to steady her hips, but he didn't try to set the pace for her.

Charlie moved her hands to cover his, then gently pulled them away from her body. The corner of his lips quirked up as she intertwined the fingers of both her hands through his and leaned forwards slightly to balance her weight so that he was holding her up. She pushed herself up again, slowly pulling herself almost off of him before sinking down again.

"Alright, I'll bite," she told him.

"Not usually my thing," he responded in an amused tone. "But if you really want to-"

Charlie shook her head. "That's not what I meant."

"Good," he responded. "I mean, I don't mind rough, but I'm not a big fan of biting."

"I'll keep that in mind," she promised. She hesitated for a moment, then shifted her grip as she asked, "How did I convince you to tell them in the dream world?"

He looked more surprised than if she had bitten him.

"You don't have to-"

"I know," she responded. "But if I want, you'll give me details and we can act it out, right?"

"I did say that," he agreed. "Never thought you'd take me up on it, but I did say that."

"So, what did I do?"

* * *

Rachel pulled her pillow over her head and let out a groan as the sound of Charlie's laughter echoed down the hallway.

"No wonder they don't sleep," Miles grumbled. "They just have sex all night."

"This was a lot easier to tolerate when they were trying to sneak around," Rachel complained.

"They have to stop eventually, right?" He asked.

He wasn't holding out much hope though. He'd already fooled himself into thinking they were done when it had gone quiet for a few minutes too many times to be fooled again.

"You're going over there if they don't," she warned.

"Me?" He questioned. "Why do I have to?"

"Do you really want me to go?" She challenged.

"No," he admitted. "That would end badly. Although, I might end up killing him if they don't stop soon so we can get some sleep."

There was a sudden eerie silence, as if they had heard his threat. Miles and Rachel held their breath as they looked at each other and waited.

There was one last creak of the bed and then nothing. No moans, no grunts, no scraping of the bed shifting against the floor. No noise whatsoever.

Miles was afraid to jinx it, so he said nothing and just waited.

A few seconds passed and then there was the faint muffled murmur of Bass's voice. Miles silently prayed that Bass wasn't trying to initiate another round.

Charlie said something and they talked for a few minutes, but didn't seem to be starting up again.

Miles let out a sigh of relief and Rachel tentatively removed the pillow from her ear.

"Are they really done?"

* * *

Charlie collapsed against the bed, with her hair splayed across the pillow, feeling equal parts satisfied and worn out. She turned her head and found Bass staring at her as if she was the answer to all his problems. She wasn't sure what to say, so she just stared back at him.

"So, if your mom knows about this, then why am I still alive?" He asked.

"I don't know," Charlie responded in a teasing tone. "Maybe she thinks you'll suffer more if you live, especially waiting for her to strike, but she says I don't need another dead boyfriend on my hands right now."

"Does that mean I'm your boyfriend then?"

"Jason wasn't exactly my boyfriend when he died either," she pointed out.

"And you didn't answer the question," he countered.

"No offence, but you don't exactly strike me as boyfriend material," she told him. "And according to my mom, you're a bad relationship. Or a phase. Maybe both."

"What are you talking about?" He questioned. "I was a great boyfriend to you in the dream world."

She wasn't sure if he was going for smug or offended with his expression, but somehow he managed to succeed a little at both with the narrowing of his eyes, the furrowed brow, and the smirk threatening to emerge at any moment as he spoke.

"Oh, sure," she responded as she rolled her eyes at him. He hardly noticed as he stared at her infectious dimples. "I bet you were a great boyfriend as part of the fantasy. It's not hard to be a good boyfriend with the nanites making me agree with everything you think and say."

"They didn't make you agree with  _everything_ ," he argued. "I mean, sure, it's not like we had any big problems. But we did disagree on things. I wouldn't have believed any of it was real if everything had gone my way without any struggle."

"Okay, so you'd be a great boyfriend as long as I mostly agreed with you?" She challenged.

"Exactly," he responded. "I was great in the dream world."

"I can't imagine it," she insisted.

"You don't want that anyways," he pointed out. "This isn't some perfect world where the weirdest thing about us is the age difference. Circumstances are way different. I'm not the same guy I was before all of the loss and bad decisions and you're not the same as you would be without that either."

"But you were like that in the dream," she countered. "And that was just a few weeks ago for you, wasn't it?"

"That's different. Your mom and Miles weren't going to kill me. You didn't have a branding or lose anything because of me," he told her. "And you weren't going to get pissed at me for trying to act like anything close to your boyfriend."

"So, what? You buried that part of you because it didn't fit with your tough guy act? You don't know me as well as you think you do," she told him. "You don't know what I want."

She wasn't sure she knew what she wanted either.

"I know you don't like talking about what this is," he said. "And I know you won't let it be anything more than sex without the excuse of needing to sleep or to keep away some guy you could easily get rid of yourself."

"Every time I let this be something, you make me regret it," she pointed out. "And maybe I didn't want to let this mean something because it would be too complicated with my mom and Miles around, but that didn't work and they found out anyways."

Maybe, she didn't want anything to happen after how disastrously things had gone when she had let Jason in. Maybe, she was terrified of shutting him out because of how guilty she felt over the way she had treated Jason before he had died and because she couldn't take that back and didn't want to repeat her mistakes.

"If you were expecting so much trouble, then why have you been exclusively sleeping with me?" He asked. "And don't say just because I'm here."

"Who else is going to stay up most of the night with me when I can't sleep?" She asked in an amused tone. "Besides, you probably understand better without making me talk about it than Jeff would, even if he stayed up all night listening to it. And maybe I like a little talk without having to go back and explain everything from the start."

"You've been leaving me awake all by myself in the middle of the night lately," he pointed out.

She could tell he was trying to sound annoyed, but she cracked a smile and told him, "You're not mad about that."

"Mad about you getting some sleep? No. Mad about being the only one awake, trying not to wake you up? Definitely."

"Well, we do have a bed tonight," she said. "Maybe we could both get some sleep for once."

Charlie shifted closer to him and let one arm rest across him as she set her head on his chest. It was nice for a moment before he wrecked it.

"You do realize how terrible this is going to be for trying not to wake you up if you can sleep and I can't, right?" He questioned.

"See? You always ruin it as soon as I let this go any further," she pointed out, then moved off of him and rolled over so that her back was facing him. "Fine. Have your precious space."

He rolled towards her and ever so slowly wrapped his arm around her to test the waters. She relaxed a little so he shifted closer, pressing his body against hers, and slid his hand over hers. He held his breath for a moment, waiting for her to react.

"Does this work for you?" He asked.

"It could."

He removed his hand from hers for just long enough to brush her hair behind her shoulder, then slid his hand back to hers and pressed his lips against her neck. "Good."


	18. Chapter 18

It was nearly noon the next day, when Rachel asked, "How long are we going to wait for them to get up?"

It wasn't that she thought they were going to find anything if they kept moving, but the more ground they covered, the sooner Monroe was likely to give up on finding Connor so they could go home. Besides, Charlie and Monroe being holed up in a bedroom together for that long was uncomfortable to think about. Rachel wanted her daughter to be happy and she wanted her to move on from Jason, but she wasn't sure if Charlie's thing with Monroe was a step in the right or wrong direction.

"I don't know," Miles responded. "They could use the sleep, but this is getting a bit much."

He was antsy too. Miles hated standing still. He kept insisting the trip was strictly for Charlie and Monroe's benefit, but Rachel had a sneaking suspicion that he had wanted a mission to throw himself into too. Last time they had been stuck in Willoughby with nothing to do, he had tried to run off. This time he had run off, but he had taken them with him.

"I'm going to go check if they're awake," Rachel insisted.

That sounded like an idea with a lot of potential to go wrong to Miles, so he volunteered, "I'll do it."

Miles left Rachel behind and walked upstairs and past the open door of the empty bedroom that had gone unused the night before, then tapped gently on the door with his knuckles. He didn't want to wake them up if they were asleep, but he felt the need to knock and warn them in case they were awake. That was more for Charlie's benefit than Bass's, since he knew Bass couldn't care less if Miles walked in on him undressed or not.

"Bass?" He asked, just loud enough to be heard through the door. "Charlie?"

He waited for a long moment with no answer, then turned the handle and gently creaked the door open.

"I'm coming in," he said, although he was fairly certain neither of them were awake to hear him.

He opened the the door far enough to find they were both still asleep on one side of the bed with Bass's arm wrapped around her and Charlie holding his arm to her.

Miles left the room as carefully as he had entered, slowly shutting the door behind him, then headed back to the kitchen where he had left Rachel.

"So?" She asked.

"They're sleeping," he responded. "Let's give them a few more minutes."

* * *

Charlie woke up with a jolt and felt hot breath on her neck as an arm tightened violently around her waist. She was still groggy, although her heart was beating a mile a minute, and just as she was about to jut an elbow back into whoever was grabbing her, she heard quiet and utterly incoherent words near her ear as the arm holding her twitched and she remembered where she had fallen asleep the night before.

She was inside, in a bed, safe with Bass. The arm constricted around her waist was not an attack. The breath on her neck was not a warning or a threat. He was having a nightmare and was clinging to her so hard that he had woken her up.

Charlie pried his arm loose enough that she was able to roll over to face him.

She heard a half coherent 'Connor' muttered under his breath as he shifted again, pushing his body into hers, even though she was already closer to the edge of the bed than she would like to be.

"Bass," she tried quietly, but he didn't wake up.

She brought a hand up to his face and stroked his cheek with her thumb. She saw a little of the tension leave his shoulders, but he was clearly still on edge as he pulled his face away from her hand and pushed it further into the pillow.

"Bass," she said, speaking a little above her normal volume. "Wake up."

His shoulder twitched and his face burrowed further into the pillow. She watched him silently as his eyelids fluttered a few times, then settled on open. He grumbled something incoherent that she thought was supposed to be a question.

"What?" She asked.

"Why'd you wake me up?" He repeated.

"You were trying to break my ribs in your sleep," she told him.

"Sorry," he told her, then rubbed a hand over his face. "Bad dream."

"I noticed."

"At least I woke up to something nice," he commented with a flirty smile as his eyes raked down to where the blankets barely covered her chest, then back up to her face. "How about you?"

She knew he was asking how she had slept, but she couldn't resist.

"Not my favourite thing to wake up to," she teased.

"What? Me or the rib crushing?" He asked.

She pretended to consider for a moment.

"You're okay," she said finally. "I could do without your vise grip though."

"How'd you sleep?" He asked.

"Easily after last night," she told him with a small smile. "I can't remember any dreams, so I guess that means better than you."

"So, it's a competition now?" He asked in an amused tone.

"Sure," she agreed. "Since I'm winning."

"Well, as long as one of us is nightmare free-"

"I can hear you up there!" Miles' shouts came through the floorboards. "Get dressed! You've been sleeping all day!"

The colour drained from Charlie's face as she wondered just how much Miles and her mom had heard the night before if he could hear them talking from downstairs.

"Yes, Dad!" Bass called back down the stairs.

There was the faint sound of grumbling, but no response.

"I haven't had a girl's parents catch me in her bed in decades," Bass said to Charlie as he unwrapped his arm from around her.

"I get it, you're old," she deadpanned as she sat up. "Could you maybe not refer to Miles as your dad and my dad practically in the same sentence?"

"Hey, if we get married, he'll be my father-in-law," he defended.

"Okay, one, we are not getting married," she insisted. "And, two, even if we did, he would be your uncle-in-law."

"You remember you said that when you're hopelessly in love with me and begging me to propose to you," Bass told her. "Remember this conversation right here."

"Why wouldn't I just propose to you then?" Charlie asked with a furrowed brow. "And that is never going to happen. Ever."

"Was the ever  _really_  necessary?" He questioned. "Sounds to me like you're already getting defensive."

"You caught me," she deadpanned. "I regret it already. Oh, Bass. Please marry me, right here, right now. I'll do anything."

He laughed as she stared at him with a blank expression.

"See? I knew you'd come around."

"Quit trying to get me to marry you and get dressed," she told him. "Miles is already in a bad mood."

"When isn't he?"

* * *

When they got in the wagon, Bass sat down next to Charlie and placed his right hand just below the knee of her left leg, with his elbow resting in the space between her thighs, then leaned back and shut his eyes to think. He wanted to find Connor, but they hadn't come across a single clue to his location. Was it stupid to keep looking? Or would he be betraying Connor again if he gave up without looking longer?

"What? You didn't get enough sleep last night?" Charlie quipped. Her voice dropped low enough that only he would hear, so her mom and Miles wouldn't take her joke the wrong way as she added, "What are you going to do if you have a nightmare this time? Pull my leg off?"

"No," he responded without opening his eyes. "I like your leg as it is."

"I'm guessing I don't want context for that," Miles commented.

"There is no context," Charlie told him with a smirk. "He just has a leg fetish."

Bass's eyes shot open as he defended, "I do not have a leg fetish."

"Yes, he does," she bluffed. "He's weirdly fixated on them. I think the real reason he was with me in his dream world was because my legs were his type."

"She's lying. If I had a leg fetish, you would know about it by now, Miles," Bass insisted, then turned to Charlie. "You're the worst, you know that?"

"That would be a lot more convincing if I wasn't literally the girl of your dreams," Charlie pointed out in an amused tone.

"Cute," he responded. "How long have you been sitting on that one?"

She shrugged. "Not long. For someone who's so in love with me, you sure complain about me a lot."

She was getting smug now, smirking over at him with that arrogant look that affected him way more than it should.

"Hey, I just as easily could have fallen in love with Duncan or Emma," he countered, although his usual conviction was missing.

Bass didn't even realize his mistake until she went silent and some doubt crept into her features. Her leg felt tense under his arm.

"I was just messing with you." Her tone was guarded.

Clearly, he had fucked up their new set-up and scared her already. So much for not having all his cards on the table right away.

She paused for a moment, as if she was considering whether to say something else or not, before she asked, "You're in love with me?"

"I didn't say that," he responded. "Those are your words, not mine."

"You didn't deny it either," she pointed out.

"She's right. You did kind of imply it," Miles chimed in oh so helpfully.

Bass ignored that and kept his eyes focused on Charlie, glaring daggers as he challenged, "So what if I am?"

"You're in love with dream me?" She asked, although he was pretty sure she knew that wasn't what he had meant.

"Yeah, her too," he agreed.

His answer was good enough for Charlie, even though it wasn't what she had been asking.

"I'm just surprised that love is something you're capable of," she responded.

It was a cheap shot and she knew it. Obviously, he loved Connor and Miles. But Sebastian Monroe  _in_  love. That didn't make sense. Still, the deflection felt harsh.

"Don't worry," he assured her in a tone that came out a little too sarcastic for his own ears. "I'm not expecting you to say it back."

"Good," she told him. "Because I'm not. In love with you, I mean."

He had no doubt that she was telling the truth. In a way, he would be disappointed if she wasn't. Charlie was stubborn in the best and worst of ways and, even if things had been warming up between them lately, he knew she was far from loving him. He didn't want her falling in love with him just because she was going through a rough patch and he was there. He wanted the real thing and he wanted to earn it.

"I know," he told her.

"So, is this why you were trying so hard to convince me to marry you?" She asked in an attempt to lighten the mood.

"He what?" Rachel asked as her calm composure cracked.

"Relax. It was a joke," Bass told her. "And Charlie permanently turned down any chance of an offer. It was a little harsh, honestly."

Rachel didn't look sympathetic towards his cause, but she dropped it at that.

"What's the difference?" Charlie asked. "It's never going to come up anyways. You're not the getting married type."

"Yeah, you're probably right," he agreed, although his tone didn't come across entirely convincing.

There was a long silence before Charlie added, "I'd like to think I was a little easier to fall in love with than Duncan, considering she couldn't have cared less whether you lived or died. She was perfectly happy to watch you die and take me and Connor down as collateral damage. If it weren't for me, she would have been dead then and you and Connor would have been too."

Even though Gould had claimed he'd let Connor go, Bass didn't bother correcting her. They both knew that the likelihood that Gould would have kept his word and let Connor walk was next to none.

"Yeah, well, how many times over would you have been dead before then if it wasn't for me?" He challenged.

"Not as many times as I've saved your ass," Charlie insisted.

"The Tower?" Bass asked.

"That was once," Charlie pointed out.

"And you only did it because it was the only way to keep me from letting us both die there," Rachel added.

"What about with that bounty hunter?" Bass challenged.

Charlie let out a laugh. "You're kidding, right? That guy was useless. You didn't rescue me from anything. I was only keeping him around to help me find you after you took off and left me behind. There's no way that idiot was going to kill me, with or without you there."

"And the bar?" Bass questioned.

Charlie shook her head, "I could have handled it, even if you hadn't been stalking me."

"Look, you took down an impressive number of them, especially for being drugged," Bass assured her. "But we both know you needed my help there."

"Fine," she admitted. "So, you saved me twice. I'm the reason you didn't get executed, which means I saved you twice. We're even."

"What about when you wanted to rush right into Patriot Town without a plan and I stopped you?" He challenged.

"The Patriots were still pretending to play nice," Charlie pointed out. "I would have been fine."

"Maybe, but how about in the school?"

She frowned. "You mean when you left me for dead and then thought better of it at the last second?"

"I came back for you, didn't I?" He challenged. "In case you haven't noticed, the list of people I'm willing to go out of my way to save isn't a long one. Just Miles, Connor, and you."

Charlie let out a snort at that. "Yeah, right."

"Excuse me?" Bass demanded. He was genuinely confused. They had already established that he was in love with her and he was pretty sure she'd known that he'd go out of his way to save her long before that.

"That's really the story you're sticking with, huh?" She questioned as she stared over at him. "You couldn't care less about what happens to anyone else?"

"That isn't exactly news," he pointed out. "Even if you want it to be a lie."

She wasn't backing down though. Bass wasn't sure what was more shocking, the fact that she was defending his morality, or that she was so utterly convinced that he was a better person than he would ever come close to being.

"It is a lie," she insisted. "And we both know it."

"No. We don't."

"What about Aaron and Cynthia?" Charlie challenged.

"They got captured on my watch, didn't they?" He retorted. He wasn't sure why he was trying so hard to convince Charlie that he didn't care about saving anyone, but he needed her to know the truth instead of trying to twist him in her mind into someone he wasn't. And maybe the mention of another Cynthia he couldn't save had put him in a foul mood. "And I never would have risked my ass getting him back if Miles hadn't made me before he'd tell me where Connor was."

"So then why'd you leave Connor to save strangers from mustard gas?" She questioned.

"That wasn't about saving anyone," he countered. "It was about beating the Patriots and stopping their plan."

He was surprised when instead of looking disappointed at his apathy, she narrowed her eyes in determination.

"What about my mom?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Bass insisted.

Miles and Rachel were staring at him now. Rachel looked doubtful, while Miles was glancing between him and Charlie, trying to determine which one of them was bluffing.

"Why did you come back for me after you got away from the bounty hunters?" Charlie challenged. "I kicked your ass and you left me there until the next day. What made you come back?"

He didn't like the way she was asking like she knew what his motivations were. He was sure she was laying down a trap for him.

"Okay, first of all, you did not kick my ass," Bass argued. "You tried to kill me and I managed to fend you off without even hurting you."

"Yeah, you were a real Prince Charming," she commented sarcastically. "You killed one of the bounty hunters and took the wagon and left me with the compulsive liar one that wouldn't stop staring at my ass. That didn't bother you at the time though, so why did you come back?"

Charlie was going to make him admit it, no matter how long he tried to dodge it for. She hated his macho, couldn't care less about hardly anyone, act. Maybe if he admitted it, things would get a little less tense between him and her mom. She wanted them to get along at least a little, since she knew things were bound to erupt sooner or later if they continued pretending to get along just for show.

"You were my ticket to Miles," he told her with a shrug. "You knew that at the time."

"If I was your ticket, then why didn't you take me with you in the first place? You only came back after you found out there was a bounty on my mom's head."

"You're really not going to drop this, huh?" He questioned. "You were still pissed off and trying to kill me. I didn't have any way to convince you to take me to Miles, until I saw that poster and knew it was my only shot to convince you that you needed my help."

"You were going to take off until you saw it," Charlie argued. "Why can't you just admit you wanted to help stop the Patriots from taking her? You said it before."

Rachel would never believe it if he admitted it anyways. She'd be sure he'd just used the bounty to manipulate Charlie into taking him there. He liked that better though. Things were more comfortable when he and Rachel pretended they'd never felt anything but hate towards each other. That made it easier to stay angry at her instead of at himself for all the things he had done. He didn't need another repeat of the Tower all over again. The idea of dropping the mask around Rachel again made his skin crawl. He'd carefully crafted his defences against her since that moment. He didn't need to give her any more ammunition to use against him and he didn't need Miles or Charlie getting any crazy ideas about him and Rachel getting along.

"You wanted to stop them," Bass brushed it off. "I wanted to find Miles, so I agreed to help you. But it was an act. Why would I want to save her? She wants me dead."

He glanced in Rachel's direction and felt a lump in his throat. He had been expecting her to look pissed at that comment and had been planning on smirking over at her to grate on her nerves, but instead she was staring at him with a confused look he had seen on her before.

"Why do you have to do that?" Rachel questioned.

"Do what?" Bass asked. "We don't like each other. You want me dead and I want you dead, but we're stuck together because we have people in common. You were willing to kill yourself just to take me down with you. The deal was I save Charlie and we work together for long enough to get out of the Tower before going back to killing each other. What part of that made you think I could care less whether you live or die?"

"So, we're just going to pretend like the rest of that conversation never happened?" Rachel questioned.

"I said whatever it would take to stop you from killing us both," he insisted. "That doesn't mean any of it was true."

He never should have let her in. He had thought they weren't going to make it out and he'd had no one and nothing left. He'd been at his wit's end and racked with guilt over everything he had done, so he'd admitted to his sins in what he had thought had been his final hours. He'd said whatever he could to convince her to unlock the gun, or at least to try to earn her forgiveness, and for a horrible moment he had remembered how things had used to be back when they had been friends before the blackout. He wasn't that Bass and she wasn't that Rachel though and out of all the things he had to grieve for, their friendship that was ancient history wasn't high on his list anymore.

"That was the only time you were honest, even with yourself, in years," Rachel retorted. "You were a real person again for a minute and that was terrifying, but at least it was better than the act."

"You seemed pretty damn sure it was an act back then," he countered.

"Yeah, but then you snapped and threw your little temper tantrum," she responded in an eerily calm tone that was somehow so much worse than if she was yelling at him. "And then you dropped it and told me the truth. Or are you saying that you were proud of what the republic became and you wanted Connor to see you like that? Or that you honestly couldn't have cared less if another one of my kids died?"

"Fine," Bass said in an annoyed tone. "I made a lot of mistakes and maybe I wanted to make up for them instead of letting the Patriots take you. Happy?"

"No," Rachel responded. "You've still done terrible things and I still have every reason to dislike you. But I haven't exactly been trying to kill you lately, have I? Treat Charlie right and I might not have a reason to start trying again."

"Is that how Miles won you back over?" He questioned, even though he knew it was a bad idea. "Suddenly he's a nice guy again because he takes care of her? You used to think he was a monster too."

Charlie was surprised. She'd heard Bass imply that her mom didn't deserve Miles dozens of times, but she'd never heard him say anything about who Miles used to be affecting how her mom thought of Miles.

"Miles changed. He switched to the right side."

"And I didn't?" Bass questioned.

"I don't know," Rachel admitted. "I'm not sure you're done changing sides."

"I lost my kid fighting on your side, didn't I?"

"I thought you didn't care about saving anyone," Charlie pointed out quietly.

"No, you didn't," he insisted.

"Sure I did," she responded. "I just haven't thought it in a long time."

Bass decided to change the subject, and hopefully avoid any more serious conversations with Rachel, as he turned to Miles and bragged, "You know, I actually got a reasonable amount of sleep last night."

"Must be nice," Miles grumbled. "We didn't after you kept us up half the night."

Charlie felt a surge of embarrassment at the confirmation that her mom and uncle had been able to hear them the night before. Bass didn't appear all that bothered by it.

"Oh, woe is you," he said sarcastically. "Behind on your sleep for one whole night. You know, my heart really goes out for you, Miles. I don't know how you're surviving right now. You should get a medal."

"You're a dick," Miles told him. "I haven't had to listen to you have sex that much since Emma."

"Bullshit," Bass called. "You never heard me and Emma."

"I was on the couch," Miles pointed out. "You two weren't exactly subtle."

"You were passed out," Bass argued.

"No. I wasn't," Miles insisted. "I was half asleep, trying to decide whether it was worth getting up to take a piss, when you two started having sex. Emma didn't need to tell me about it. I heard."

"And what? You just decided to wait until I was going to be executed to tell me you knew?" Bass questioned. "How is that not a dick move?"

"You waited until you were going to be executed to tell me that you slept with her," Miles pointed out. "That's definitely the bigger dick move."

"Whatever," Bass said, brushing off the subject altogether. "Things worked out now, right? You're with Rachel."

Rachel furrowed her brow as if she knew he was trying to insult her, especially after their uncomfortable discussion about not wanting each other dead, but was still trying to figure out how he was doing it.

"I thought you liked me better with Nora," Miles commented.

"Nora's dead," Bass deadpanned. "And it's not like you would have had me with Charlie in your dream world."

"Oh, so now I'm with you?" Charlie questioned. The question didn't come out as harsh as it would have a few days prior.

Bass turned to look at her and asked, "Aren't you?"

Charlie didn't say anything. Obviously they were something, but that felt like a loaded question, so she was relieved when Miles spoke up and she didn't have to.

"No, I probably would have had you with Shelly," he admitted.

Charlie hadn't heard of Shelly. Bass hadn't mentioned her, even once.

"Who's Shelly?" Rachel questioned. She had known Monroe for a long time and she hadn't ever heard of anyone named Shelly before.

"Shelly's dead," Bass said. Judging by the way his shoulders had tensed, he did not like the new choice of subject.

"They were basically married," Miles pointed out.

Charlie couldn't imagine Bass married. She was still having a hard time picturing him as a boyfriend, even when he was getting closer to filling that role with her.

She looked over at him as she pointed out, "But didn't you just agree that you aren't the type to get married?"

"You don't know me as well as you think you do, Charlie," he threw her words back at her with a smirk.

"I'm surprised you weren't with her in your dream world," Miles said to Bass. "With another kid."

Charlie remembered how defensive Bass had gotten when she'd been surprised that the Charlie in his dream world had been pregnant. He'd said something about how he would want another kid if the blackout hadn't happened and they were in a world where raising a kid, or even childbirth, wasn't so dangerous.

The wagon was completely silent for a few moments. Charlie placed her hand over his, still on her leg, and Bass decided to change the subject again.

"What exactly are we doing here, Miles?" He asked. "With this trip, I mean."

"Looking for your kid," Miles responded matter-of-factly. "What have you been doing?"

"No, I mean, how long are we going to keep this up before you decide I'm mentally stable enough and we stop looking?"

"You want us to give up looking?" Miles asked in a surprised tone.

"No," Bass admitted. "But we're never going to find him and, even if we do, it's not like he's going to want to come back with me. He hates me."

"Maybe he's pissed," Miles said. "But I don't think he hates you."

"He wants me dead," Bass pointed out.

"Okay, now you're just being over-dramatic," Miles insisted. "He risked his ass letting you out in Mexico when he hardly knew anything about you. He doesn't want you dead."

"He gave Neville the go ahead to try and kill me and just stood there and watched," Bass pointed out as he finally opened his eyes to shoot a glare in Miles' direction. "I don't think I'm going to be getting any Father's Day cards from him anytime soon."

"Okay, so maybe he wanted you dead," Miles admitted. "But he'll get over it. I wanted you dead and I got over it. I mean, I was pretty dead set on killing you in the Tower and I ended up saving you from your own men instead."

Charlie hadn't known anything about Miles saving Bass back then, but that was probably for the best. She would have been furious at the time. Now, she was glad Miles had done it.

"You've known me a lot longer," Bass pointed out. "He met me when I was already a fuck up."

"Well, I went all the way to New Vegas just to kill you and I've been trying to keep you alive instead for a while," Charlie chimed in. "And I hated you. A lot. But now I think you're pretty alright to be around."

"Thanks for that ringing endorsement," Bass said. "But I'm pretty sure Connor's not letting go of the grudge on this one, even if we do find him. He came with me because he wanted a republic. I kept Davis alive when it would have been easier to get the republic back if I didn't and that was it. I thought I was growing on him, but I guess not because as soon as he figured out there wasn't going to be another Monroe Republic, he flipped out and bailed. And if that wasn't enough for him to want nothing to do with me again, I'm pretty sure locking him in an abandoned building with pissed off Neville and then just taking off was enough to do the trick."

"Maybe worry a little less about how much convincing he's going to need," Miles suggested. "And figure out if you want to keep looking for him, or if you're ready to stop."

Bass would hate it if he gave up, only for Connor to be in the next town over, so he responded, "Let's keep looking. At least for a little longer."

* * *

When they arrived in the next town, Bass looked around and immediately commented, "I need a drink."

"Well, I guess we're heading to the bar," Charlie commented as she headed towards them.

"Alright, we'll look around and meet up with you later," Miles responded, then turned to Rachel. "If that works for you."

She nodded her head in agreement.

Charlie followed Bass as he headed down the street in the direction he thought the bar might be in.

"So, why do you need a drink so badly?" She asked him.

"Between not finding Connor, him not wanting me to, and having to have an actual discussion with your mom, I've had better days. I think I've got enough excuses." When he realized that she wasn't saying anything, he added, "This morning was good though. The day went downhill afterwards."

"Pretty bad when having nightmares was the highlight of your day," she commented.

"Not nightmares," he corrected. "Waking up with you. Having a little time alone before going back to the act."

"The act?" She questioned.

"Pretending I think we're going to find Connor," he responded. "Pretending I don't care if we don't."

"Kind of hard to pretend it isn't bothering you around me when you're murmuring about him in your sleep, huh?" She challenged.

"Was I?" He asked.

"What? No one's ever told you that you talk in your sleep?" She questioned.

He shrugged. "I haven't slept in the same bed as someone in a while. I don't think I used to. Did I say anything else?"

"Don't worry," she assured him. "It was mostly incoherent."

"Good," he said with a smirk. "Wouldn't want you finding out what I've been dreaming about, would I?"

She cracked a smile in response. "Clearly."

* * *

"We should go," Bass insisted twenty minutes later as he took a long swig of his drink. "Leave this town. Maybe we should just give up and go back to Willoughby."

"Are you sure?" Charlie asked.

"I don't know," he admitted. "I'm sure about leaving this town though. Connor's not here. He'd hate this place."

"I'll go track down Miles and my mom then," she said.

"I'll wait here," he responded. "Get another drink."

"Whatever," she told him. "Suit yourself."

She turned to leave and he grabbed her wrist to stop her. His hand slid into hers as she turned back to face him again.

"What?" She asked, when he didn't say anything.

"Forget about it," he said as he let go of her hand. He'd wanted to ask her to stay with him, but that would just slow them down and he wanted to get out of town fast.

"Wherever he is, I'm sure he's fine," she told him.

"What makes you think that?" He asked her.

"He's got way more of a survival instinct than any of us," she pointed out. "He'd rather run away from death traps than towards them."

"Yeah, I guess you're probably right," he agreed in a tone that wasn't entirely convincing.

"I like the sound of you saying that," she said in an amused tone.

He turned on his barstool and his hands landed on her hips as he looked into her eyes and assured her, "You're usually right, Charlie."

She smiled at him in return and her hands moved to his shoulders as she said, "I'm going to go find them. You try not to drink yourself to death while I'm gone."

"I'll do my best to stop on the brink," he said with a flirty smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.

She turned to walk away and he grabbed her hand again.

"What now?" She asked in an exasperated tone. For someone who wanted to leave town so badly, he sure was doing his best to stop her from even leaving the bar to look for the others.

He rose from his seat to kiss her briefly on the lips, then took a half step back as he let go of her hand.

"Just in case I do die of alcohol poisoning while you're gone," he told her as he sat back down on the stool.

"So, I can go now?" She asked in an amused tone.

"Yeah, you can go."

Charlie barely made it three steps out of the bar when something hit her hard in the back of the head and her vision went black.


End file.
